State testing programs today are more extensive than ever, and their results are required to serve more purposes and high-stakes decisions than one might have imagined. Assessment results are used to hold schools, districts, and states accountable for student performance and to help guide a multitude of important decisions. This report describes…

The work reported in this paper reflects a collaborative effort of many individuals representing multiple organizations. It began during a session at the October 2008 meeting of TILSA when a representative of a member state asked the group if any of their programs had experienced unexpected fluctuations in the annual state assessment scores, and…

Three papers in this book place the current movement of accountability and State assessment in perspective and point to the emergence of a different set of "arrangements" for education than those normally accepted by Americans and a different way of framing goals for education. In the first paper, Miriam Clasby draws attention to the intended and…

Calls for accountability in America's schools have created increased responsibilities for educational leaders. In this article, we describe and discuss a study of elementary, middle, and high school principals' perceptions of the state-wide educational accountability program in North Carolina. The respondents indicated that the state's…

In light of the National Education Goals of 1990, several arguments against any federally funded large-scale census approach to the assessment of college student learning in the United States are presented to clarify challenges to an objective of Goal 5, which specifies that "the proportion of college graduates who demonstrate advanced…

Presented here is a collection of assessment and evaluation abstracts of local, State and Federal programs in the Clark County School District in Nevada. In the first section, the district-wide aptitude and achievement testing measures are described, and the results of testing are presented. Section two provides information on program evaluations…

Three documents related to the passage of Public Law 102-62 are presented. The first document is the House of Representatives Report 102-104, a report of the Committee on Education and Labor regarding the establishment of a National Council on Education Standards and Testing. The Council would be established to determine whether standards for…

Recognizing the lack of public confidence in the schools, public officials and educators should discuss the proper use and limitations of competency testing and the implementation of national tests. Competency tests should be used for diagnosis, for certifying that students possess basic skills, and for public awareness. They should not be the…

Current national efforts at education reform rely largely on the use of standardized testing, the cornerstone of federal education policy as a result of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, with its requirements for regular testing of all students and demonstrations of adequate yearly progress on tests by all schools. The challenges…

The New Mexico State legislature requires the Department of Education to publish this report card concerning several educational indicators. The indicators included are: (1) enrollment statistics; (2) Advanced Placement Program enrollment statistics; (3) New Mexico Scholars Program statistics; (4) percentage of the graduating class applying to…

Extensive public concern about the deficiency in basic skills confirmed by a decline in standardized test scores and widespread implementation of a variety of state and local improvement programs indicates an urgent need for national attention to this timely issue. However, a federal testing program or federally-imposed performance standards are…