The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides greater flexibility in state accountability systems than did previous federal legislation. In response, many states continue to refine their accountability systems to include college readiness tests, including college admissions and placement exams. This paper summarizes perspectives of K-12…

This report analyzes the validity issues that arise in the context of educational accountability systems. The report addresses validity from three interlocking perspectives. The first explores the theory of action underlying accountability provisions. It considers problems emerging from the distance between aspirations for accountability in…

For several decades there has been a loud outcry from the early childhood education community that assessment, especially standardized assessment, is inappropriate during the early years. As we move through the first decade of the twenty-first century, there is a new public outcry for standards and accountability--even for preschool programs.…

Two trends have converged during the past three decades to change the face of public school education in America. First, achievement testing has been greatly expanded in terms of both the quantity of tests available and the number of uses for the information collected from testing. Second, there has been a significant increase in the development…

A review of public demand for accountability uncovers three types of educational assessment problems: demand for valid reading measures, need for a broader range of assessments, and value of assessments for various audiences. Integration of the various types of assessments is recommended. (SK)

Critical issues addressed in the literature with regard to teacher evaluation, appraisal instruments, and their use are reviewed. The focus of the study is to provide ideas and suggestions on improving the evaluation process, something best achieved by matching the appropriate instrument with that which it purports to measure. (SLD)

As education policymakers have moved to reform K-12 public education, the roles of test publishers in assessment have expanded. In the last two decades these expanded roles have coincided with the movement of assessment to the center of education reform initiatives. The drive for improvement in public education has made the roles of test…

As schools move toward performance assessment, there is increasing discussion of using these assessments for accountability purposes. When used for making decisions, performance assessments must meet high standards of validity and reliability. One major source of unreliability in performance assessments is interrater disagreement. In this paper,…

Examines international assessments, like the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, and what they can tell about how well Canadian students perform relative to other participating jurisdictions and how well jurisdictions do on different assessments at different points in time. Discusses uses of international comparisons to inform…

This paper makes the case that, as implemented so far, there has been an inverse correlation between innovation and accountability in statewide assessment systems. The higher the stakes attached to the assessment results, the more conservative the assessment methodology ultimately used. Case studies of two state assessment programs were carried…

Given the wide individual differences among any group of students and since measurements are always accompanied by errors, the question of how tests should be used in assessing the quality of an educational program is considered. The ways in which educators have dealt with this problem are reviewed, from the systematic examinations of the question…

This paper synthesizes information derived from five sources regarding issues in testing as they related to the American 2000; an education strategy and the national education goals. The focus is on proposed national tests. The issue of national testing extends far beyond testing itself because it touches on the structure of the U.S. educational…

The movement to standardization and high-stakes testing has been driven by ideological and political concerns and has adversely affected teaching/learning, democratic discourse, and educational equity. Rural schools are hit harder because of geographic isolation and insufficient staff and resources. Testing used for purposes other than measuring…

The topic of high-stakes testing (HST) is important because HST has direct and indirect effects on career-technical education (CTE) programs and timely because HST increasingly enters public discussion and has produced a large body of research and practice that generalizes to CTE. A review of HST has identified two persisting dilemmas: policy and…

Problems with performance assessment (PA) and multiple-choice tests (MCTs) are outlined, with reference to the literature on accountability. PA for individual teachers who should integrate their assessments with their instruction; PA as a supplement to more traditional examinations for licensure decisions; and some limited, experimental tryouts of…