Recently, the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) completed a study to connect the scale of the North Carolina State End of Grade (EOG) Testing Program used for North Carolina's mathematics and reading assessments with NWEA's Rausch Interval Unit (RIT) scale. Information from the state assessments was used in a study to establish…

Many Pennsylvania colleges and universities require that teacher candidates pass a standardized assessment in order to gain formal entry in to their education programs. Standardized tests are also required for Level I teacher certification within Pennsylvania. The initial assessment required of all Pennsylvania preservice teachers for…

Following a push to make "the nation's report card" better reflect the academic performance of all children in America's schools, most states boosted the numbers of students with disabilities and English-language learners who participated in the 2011 reading and math tests that are part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).…

Operational testing programs employing item response theory (IRT) applications benefit from of the property of item parameter invariance whereby item parameter estimates obtained from one sample can be applied to other samples (when the underlying assumptions are satisfied). In theory, this feature allows for applications such as computer-adaptive…

In "Beyond Test Scores: Leading Indicators for Education," Foley and colleagues (2008) define leading indicators as those that "provide early signals of progress toward academic achievement" (p. 1) and stress that educators "need leading indicators to help them see the direction their efforts are going in and to take…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) focuses on accountability for student achievement by mandating higher educational standards that are monitored through required annual student testing. The Complementary Assistance Learning Program (CALP), a before and after school tutoring and mentoring service, offers a potential means of accelerating the…

In recent years, scores on the annual state reading and mathematics tests used for accountability have gone up in most states. These trends in state test scores do not always coincide, however, with trends on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the federally sponsored assessment that is administered periodically to…

Many articles and reports have reviewed, researched, and commented on international assessments from the perspective of exploring what is relevant for the United States' education systems. Researchers make claims about whether the top-performing systems have transferable practices or policies that could be applied to the United States. However,…

This report is the first in a series of reports describing results from the Center on Education Policy's (CEP's) third annual analysis of state testing data. The report provides an update on student performance at the proficient level of achievement, and for the first time, includes data about student performance at the advanced and basic levels.…

Many in the research and policy worlds have taken for granted the existence of a phenomenon known as the "plateau effect," wherein test scores rise in the early years of a test-based accountability system and then level off. Drawing from our database of reading and math test results from all 50 states going back as far as 1999, the…

In this series of studies, we investigated the technical adequacy of three curriculum-based measures used as benchmarks and for monitoring progress in three critical reading- related skills: fluency, reading comprehension, and vocabulary. In particular, we examined the following easyCBM measurement across grades 3-7 at fall, winter, and spring…

Title I provides extra instructional services designed to raise achievement for low-performing students in schools with relatively high poverty rates, and for all students in many of the nation's highest-poverty schools. To learn more about how well Title I students are performing academically, the Center on Education Policy (CEP) compared…

This guide for testing coordinators includes information regarding: (1) Idaho statewide testing (both state and federal requirements); (2) testing dates; (3) Idaho Reading indicator (IRI); (4) Direct Mathematics Assessment (DMA); (5) Direct Writing Assessment (DEA); (6) Idaho Alternative Assessment (IAA); (7) Idaho Standards Achievement Test…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the achievement gap between minority and white students by analyzing 1996 and 2000 reading and mathematics scores on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) at grades 5, 8, and 10. The focus was on score increases, the achievement gap between white and minority students, and whether or not a…

Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) students in grades 3 through 8 took the North Carolina End-of-Grade (EOG) multiple-choice tests during the months of May and June of 2002. These tests are the basis of the accountability program referred to as ABCs, Accountability, Basics, and Control. WCPSS EOG multiple-choice results for 2001-2002 show…