Since the passage of No Child Left Behind, large-scale assessments have come to play a central role in federal and state education accountability systems. Teachers and parents have expressed a number of concerns about their state testing programs, such as too much time devoted to testing and the high-stakes use of testing for teacher evaluation.…

Daniel Koretz is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His research focuses on educational assessment and policy, particularly the effects of high-stakes testing on educational practice and the validity of score gains. He is the author of "Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells…

Ultimately, measures in research, testing, assessment and evaluation are used, or have implications, for ranking, intervention, feedback, decision-making or policy purposes. Explicit recognition of this fact brings the often-ignored and sometimes maligned concept of consequences to the fore. Given that measures have personal and social…

Haertel's argument is that one must "expand the scope of test validation to include indirect testing effects" because these effects are often the "rationale for the entire testing program." The author strongly agrees that this is essential. However, he maintains that Haertel's argument does not go far enough and that there are two additional…

Over the past decade, international and national education agencies have begun to emphasize the improvement of the quality (rather than quantity) of education in developing countries. This trend has been paralleled by a significant increase in the use of educational assessments as a way to measure gains and losses in quality of learning. As…

It is time to replace the examination regime at 16 and 18 by something more appropriate. The coalition government has been solidifying its place by its Baccalaureate reforms at both ages, but this is a move in quite the wrong direction. Whatever the wider purposes that the examination system may serve, its core aim is to find out how well students…

This article is a commentary on Australia's involvement in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests. It provides a rationale for Australia's participation in the PISA programme, the influences of PISA involvement on education policies and practices, and considerations and implications for school leaders and education…

Well before the examinations grade crisis of 2012, Michael Gove had set out clear intentions for reforming public examinations. Though he claimed to be improving examinations and assessment by replicating practices that took place in high-performing countries and thus improving the ability of the UK economy to "compete", this…

By forcing gifted educators to teach in preparation for state testing and national assessments, the joy of discovery is becoming an endangered species, and learning is becoming a chore rather than an opportunity. Is it possible to strike a more reasonable balance? Kelly Gallagher suggests a 50/50 approach. Half of academic endeavor should be in…

Considering consequences in the evaluation of validity is not new although it is still debated by Paul E. Newton and others. The argument-based approach to validity entails an interpretative argument that explicitly identifies the proposed interpretations and uses of test scores and a validity argument that provides a structure for evaluating the…

Through its signature initiative, Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP), the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) is promoting a vision for learning that begins in school: Starting in School . . . Rigorous and rich curriculum focused on the essential learning outcomes; comprehensive, individualized, and…

Psychometricians continue to introduce new approaches to setting cut scores for educational assessments in an attempt to improve on current methods. In this paper we describe the Item-Descriptor (ID) Matching method, a method based on IRT item mapping. In ID Matching, test content area experts match items (i.e., their judgments about the knowledge…

Since 1969 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reports on the scholastic achievements of the nation's elementary and secondary level students have been appearing frequently. The reactions to these reports are a perplexing mix of acclaim and criticism, of expressed respect but apparently slight regard. This study assesses NAEP and…

This paper describes the experiences of Colorado Springs School District Eleven in using multiple measures to determine if third graders were reading at "grade level." The use of multiple measures may be threatened by the rapidly increasing pressures about assessment and accountability in Colorado that teachers are beginning to feel that…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessed three grade levels and 21-year-olds in the 1960's, at an annual cost of $6 million. By the early 1980's, adults were no longer tested and funds had decreased to $3.8 million. Other governmental departments, however, have also been funded for testing and a number of state testing…