Background: Economists are making increasing use of measures of student achievement obtained through large-scale survey assessments such as NAEP, TIMSS, and PISA. The construction of these measures, employing plausible value (PV) methodology, is quite different from that of the more familiar test scores associated with assessments such as the SAT…

Variation in test performance among examinees from different regions or national jurisdictions is often partially attributed to differences in the degree of content correspondence between local school or training program curricula, and the test of interest. This posited relationship between test-curriculum correspondence, or "alignment,"…

This study asserts that central examinations need not necessarily be those administered by the government; they can be examinations centralized at some administrative level, but in any case, they are external to the school. This study also assessed the impact of central examinations on the functioning of the education system and students academic…

H.R. 2846, a bill to prohibit spending Federal education funds on national testing without explicit and specific legislation was referred to the Committee on Education and the Workforce of the U.S. House of Representatives. The Committee, having reviewed the bill, reports favorably on it in this document, proposes some amendments, and recommends…