In recent years, the federal government (under Republican and Democratic administrations alike) has encouraged the outsourcing of core parts of public education's work, including testing and test preparation, teaching and tutoring, data collection, and human resources management. However, researchers have found little evidence to support policy…

This chapter addresses the psychometric challenges in assessing English language learners (ELLs) and students with disabilities (SWDs). The first section addresses some general considerations in the assessment of ELLs and SWDs, including the prevalence of ELLs and SWDs in the student population, federal and state legislation that requires the…

Recently, student outcomes have bubbled to the top of debates about how to evaluate teaching in community and liberal arts colleges, universities, and professional schools, but even more international attention has been riveted on how outcomes are being used to evaluate teachers and administrators K-12 (Harris, 2012; Rowen & Raudenbush, 2016;…

The stakes of large-scale testing programs have grown considerably in the past decade with the enactment of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race To The Top (RTTT) legislations. A significant component of NCLB has been required reporting of annual yearly progress (AYP) of student subgroups disaggregated by sex, special education status, English…

Educational policies such as Race to the Top in the USA affirm a central role for testing systems in government-driven reform efforts. Such reform policies are often referred to as the global education reform movement (GERM). Changes observed with the GERM style of testing demand socially engaged validity theories that include consequential…

The Student Growth Objectives are assessments created locally or by commercial educational organizations. The students' scores from the Student Growth Objectives are included in teacher summative evaluation as one of the measures of teacher's effectiveness. The high amplitude of the requirements in teacher evaluation raised a concern of whether…

Recent federal investments in early childhood assessment systems are the result of a national need for developmentally appropriate, psychometrically sound instruments to monitor young children and evaluate the effectiveness of their learning programs. In this paper, we examined the association between teachers' perceptions of their students at the…

High-stakes testing has been a part of American education since its inception. The laws that govern the use of high-stakes tests include language that mandates the inclusion of students in special education. These laws play an influential role in the new large-scale assessments aligned with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The assessments…

In the twenty-first century, the use of standardized tests as the primary means to evaluate schools and teachers in the United States has contributed to severe dilemmas, including misleading information on what students know, lower-level instruction, cheating, less collaboration, unfair treatment of teachers, and biased teaching. This article…

Examining education policy, specifically policy related to standards, testing and accountability, from a critical perspective reveals the dominance of neoliberal perspectives. Trends of individual motivators in the educational system limit the democratic curriculum development process. "Feel good" moments for policy makers lead to…

The purpose of this report is to provide insight into how state departments are implementing legislative requirements for educator evaluation, particularly the specific circumstances states encounter around arts education. Spotlights on Delaware, a first-round recipient of Race to the Top funding, and Colorado and Arizona, third-round recipients,…

In this article, we explain how overly prescriptive, rigid state statutory and regulatory policy frameworks regarding teacher evaluation, tenure and employment decisions outstrip the statistical reliability and validity of proposed measures of teaching effectiveness. We begin with a discussion of the emergence of highly prescriptive state…

On the verge of signing a contract to help design assessments for the common standards, ACT Inc. has withdrawn from the project amid conflict-of-interest questions sparked by its own development of a similar suite of tests. Even though it involves only a small subcontract, the move by the Iowa-based test-maker, and the questions from the state…

Measuring a teacher's effectiveness in quantifiable ways is a logical step in a society driven by the SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely objectives) that pervade modern management. The idea of using student performance on standardized tests to judge a teacher's effectiveness picked up steam after the Obama…

The ranking of the United States in major international tests such as the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is used as the driving force and rationale for the current educational reforms in the United…