Teachers are now experiencing the age of quantitative test-driven assessment, in which there is little weight accorded to teacher-based judgement about student progress. In the Australian context, the NAPLaN test has become a driving force in school and teacher accountability. The language of NAPLaN is one of bands and numerical scores and…

Recently, federal legislation has been implemented requiring that public school students meet a specified performance level of academic proficiency by the 2013/2014 school year. This reform movement, known as "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB), was passed by Congress and incorporates many of President Bush's educational reform proposals…

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…

The marked increases in standardized achievement testing have raised concerns of the educational community regarding the value of standardized testing programs and their potentially harmful effect on students. This study incorporated student perceptions and their views of standardized testing and combined this information with their performance on…

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…

This document presents, in tabular form, results for the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations for grade 4, spring 2000 (the 1999-2000 school year). Results are presented for the state's total fourth grade population eligible to be tested and for each school district and school in Wisconsin. Test results are reported for reading, language…

This Action Plan has been developed to ensure the success of the Arkansas Smart Step Initiative, the part of the Arkansas Comprehensive Testing, Assessment and Accountability Program (ACTAAP) that focuses on grades 5 through 8. As do other aspects of the ACTAAP, the Smart Start Initiative has four components, each of which is described here: (1)…