Test developers are responsible to define how test scores should be interpreted and used. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) directed the Secretary of Education to use results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to confirm the proficiency scores from state developed tests. There are two sets of federal definitions…

It is argued that publishers of achievement tests, especially those who publish tests intended for use in many parts of the United States, are for the most part not in a position to obtain any decent evidence about the consequences of the uses that are made of their tests. What responsibilities and actions publishers can reasonably be expected to…

The objectives of this paper are threefold. First, a model is proposed for unifying massive amounts of conceptual and numerical information flowing from the measures of the accountability movement in Ohio and the materials that are publicly available to educators. Second, this model is translated into useable forms of information that help…

Under the Improving America's Schools Act (IASA), Title I programs are evaluated using standards-based multiple measures. In California, school systems would like to use state standards for the evaluation, but state performance standards are still under development and content standards are very new. The Sacramento City Schools (California) has…

This study was conducted to measure value added school effects in a Northwest urban public school district using a two-level hierarchical model. The model consisted of two student-level variables (prior achievement and eligibility for federal free or reduced-price lunch) and three school variables (percentage of students eligible for free or…

Multiple measures may mean multiple opportunities to show achievement or the use of multiple assessment formats. A third meaning is the use of assessments from different sources, such as augmenting an external, usually commercial assessment with a state's own assessment. The first two meanings of multiple assessments have been explored…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the assessment procedures initiated and used by most Canadian provinces during the past decade to describe public school reading achievement, to identify commonalities and differences among those procedures, and to comment on the significance of the identified trends. The stated purposes of evaluation…

This study was designed to contribute to the validity evidence for the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) by providing additional descriptive data about the performance standards in reading and mathematics at grades 4, 7, and 10. After the realignment of norm-referenced tests, large numbers of students taking the WASL had…

A systematic analysis of student assessment data from Maine and Kentucky, using National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data and state and local assessment results, was conducted to address issues of measurement and attribution involved in evaluating systemic school reform. This paper (1) examines ways to cope with the challenges of…

The purpose of this study was to examine teachers' perceptions of the direct and indirect influences that testing has on students. Subjects consisted of 12 male and 127 female kindergarten through grade 12 teachers in North Carolina--a state that mandates standardized testing. Districts may use only those test required by the state or they may use…

Although most states use a single strategy for statewide assessment, one Midwestern state has chosen a model in which local school districts are responsible for developing strategies to measure and report students' progress on state-adopted content strategies. This paper describes the state assessment system and focuses on the perspectives of…

Matches between questions in the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System for 1995-96 (KIRIS96), the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills, Fourth Edition (CTBS4), and the California Achievement Tests, Fifth Edition (CAT5) and the Kentucky Academic Expectations as they are defined in the Kentucky curriculum framework were studied. Each…

A mail questionnaire study involving 3,000 Texas educators was undertaken to describe the effects of certain Texas education reform policies as they relate to teacher burnout. Focus was on determining how the production of teacher-required paperwork and mandated student achievement testing influence teacher burnout. An initial mailing resulted in…

Several of the major considerations involved in implementing a statewide testing program are discussed. The test results provide information which influences the educational enterprise in matters of curriculum, instruction, guidance, and accountability. Tests to be used in an assessment program must be developed by the administering agency when…

This paper addresses problems with performance on open-ended (i.e., not multiple choice) test questions administered on paper for students accustomed to writing with computers. The first section summarizes the results of three studies that examined differences between computer and paper-and-pencil test results. The second section identifies three…