Educational accountability is central to the reputation of the nation's community colleges. Some community colleges are adopting mastery learning, competency-based education, curriculum tracking, and/or minimum competency-testing as a means of remaining educationally accountable. Mastery learning programs, under which students are required to…

Alternative forms of evaluating student progress are changing testing or assessment in U.S. schools. From the teacher-made to the standardized test, the familiar over-emphasis on multiple-choice items is giving way to expanded generative formats in which students are called upon to demonstrate mastery through applications in which they use complex…

The public views teacher evaluation as a major problem in the school system today. State legislatures, aware of the concern, want to mandate more effective evaluation. Common methods for evaluating teachers have been ineffective, such as measurement tests of teacher characteristics, student achievement test scores, and rating of teachers'…