Writing assessments have taken two primary forms in the past two decades: direct and indirect. Irrespective of type, either form needs to be anchored to making decisions in the classroom and predicting performance on high-stakes tests, particularly in a high-stakes environment with serious consequences. In this study, 11th-grade students were…

The No Child Left Behind Act is a mandate from the federal government for education to increase student performance and school accountability. As a result of this mandate, many states have issued the use of high-stakes standardized tests as a means of monitoring schools' accountability. New York State administers the English Language Arts (ELA)…

With increased emphasis on accountability, the use of low-stakes test data to make high-stakes decisions about program effectiveness is on the rise. In order to make valid inferences about what students know and can do, it is crucial to understand the consequences of low and high stakes in testing contexts. As a result, with a sample comprised of…