Drawing upon his experience, more than 60 years ago, as a psychometric support person to a very special teacher of brain damaged children, the author of this article reflects on the productive use of educational assessments and data from them to educate - assessment in the service of learning. Findings from the Gordon Commission on the Future of…

The evidence-centered design framework was used to create a special education teacher observation system, Recognizing Effective Special Education Teachers. Extensive reviews of research informed the domain analysis and modeling stages, and led to the conceptual framework in which effective special education teaching is operationalized as the…

Standards-based reform, as codified by the No Child Left Behind Act, relies on the ability of assessments to accurately reflect the learning that takes place in U.S. classrooms. However, this property of assessments--their instructional sensitivity--is rarely, if ever, investigated by test developers, states, or researchers. In this paper, the…