Statewide testing with college admissions exams dates to 2001, when Colorado and Illinois introduced the practice. Such testing expanded in subsequent years, and beginning in 2017--2018, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) allowed states to use a college admissions exam to meet accountability requirements for high schools. Some see this option…

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the U.S. education system in both immediate and long-term ways, calling into question how K-12 accountability will function in the 2020-21 school year and well into the future. States face considerable uncertainty about how to meet federal and state accountability requirements for this school year and beyond. It…

Using data on secondary school social studies teachers (n = 6,702) from the Survey of the Status of Social Studies (S4), a multilevel model, and an Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis, this study examined the associations of state testing policy and school characteristics on secondary social studies teachers' instructional autonomy as it relates…

Physical education teachers and programs are affected by increasing accountability demands. The purpose of this article is to explain Ohio's journey from advocacy for state physical education academic content standards to state-level policy that led to the development of state-wide assessments and data reporting on each school's report card. The…

For the past decade, the accountability model associated with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) emphasized proficiency on end of year tests; with Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) the emphasis on proficiency within statewide testing programs, though now integrated with other measures of student learning, nevertheless remains a primary metric for…

This article reports on why states are quitting the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC). The two consortia sought to develop state-of-the-art assessments that focused on problem solving and the application of knowledge, and that moved away from former tests'…

There are at least four key places where the Common Core intersects with current efforts to improve education in the United States--testing, professional development, expectations, and accountability. Understanding them can help educators, parents, and policymakers maximize the chance that the Common Core is helpful to these efforts and, perhaps…

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind, large-scale assessments have come to play a central role in federal and state education accountability systems. Teachers and parents have expressed a number of concerns about their state testing programs, such as too much time devoted to testing and the high-stakes use of testing for teacher evaluation.…

High stakes testing is popularly examined in educational research, but contemporary analyses tend to reflect a qualitative or quantitative research design (e.g., Au, 2007; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2006; Gamble, 2010). Exhaustive debate over the relative success or failure of high stakes testing is often framed between competing visions of…

Many studies point to potential unintended consequences of accountability systems such as when schools narrow their teaching to fixate on tested subjects. As a result, some states and districts in the USA have complemented the federal test-based accountability system with additional measures of educational practices to hold schools accountable on…

The purpose of this study was to investigate teachers' perceptions of the impact of alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards (AA-AAS). We used a survey of 401 teachers from three states to probe teacher perspectives across a wide range of topics. Our study found teacher perceptions were more universal than state specific. The…

Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) released the first comprehensive study of assessment perceptions in 2012 that surveyed parents, teachers, and district administrators. In the intervening years, the landscape has shifted dramatically; indeed, it continues to shift every day. With new standards, accountability assessments, and ways of…

This is the thirteenth annual report by the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) that analyzes public reporting practices of assessment data for students with disabilities in K-12 schools in the United States. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) required states to disaggregate performance data at the state and district…

Recent months have brought an ever-louder drumbeat in support of state-level participation in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), with a weaker chorus calling for states to participate in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Despite the growing infatuation with international comparisons of…

This edited volume covers the range of critical trends in the use of computers and other devices for classroom teaching, online learning, professional development, school improvement, and student assessment. "Spotlight on Technology in Education" draws on expert sources including teacher-leaders, librarians, researchers, and trainers who…