In recent years, increasing numbers of professional development programs have dealt with assessment literacy for teachers and/or administrators. Is assessment literacy merely a fashionable focus for today's professional developers or, in contrast, should it be regarded as a significant area of professional development interest for many years to…

Against a shifting set of assessment preferences in the US regarding whether educational assessment should continue to be a states rights game or become a federally dominated undertaking, the publication of five first-rate analyses about England's national curriculum assessment (NCA) is particularly propitious. Taken together, these five papers…

In this article, the author draws attention to the fact that in school evaluations, students will improve on state-mandated tests, but the improved scores will not influence a school's adequate yearly progress (AYP) status because those students' scores do not cross the proficiency point. A state's proficiency point on each of its standardized…