Do COST Assessment and Reading Comprehension Matter on Mathematics Achievement and Creativity?

The study determined the effect of COST model which consist of Concept Mapping, Open-ended questions, Synthesizing and Testing for recall of concepts and processes on the Grade 7 students’ Mathematics Achievement and Creativity of Bayabas National High School. It employed a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental group design, using a 20-item multiple choice teacher made test to assess students’ achievement with a reliability index of 0.75 and 5-item creativity test with a reliability index of 0.83 to assess students’ mathematics creativity. The school has four sections of Grade 7, one section was randomly assigned as the control group using the traditional method of assessment and another randomly chosen section as the experimental group using COST model of assessment. The two-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) unequal n’s was used to analyze the data collected since participants were classified in terms of their reading comprehension ability and the two models of assessment. Results of the analysis revealed that the participants of the COST model assessment have significant effect in the increase in their Mathematics achievement with respect to Reading Comprehension. In addition, Creativity which was evaluated in terms of mathematical flexibility, fluency and originality scores of the students in the Experimental and Control group with respect to their Reading Comprehension Level are comparable. Hence, the researcher recommends that the teacher may use COST assessment model to enhance students’ mathematics achievement and creativity since it has higher score and is comparable to standard assessment.