Presents a historical framework of classroom assessment, highlighting the key tenets of social efficiency curricula, behaviorist learning theories, and scientific measurement. Offers a contrasting social-constructivist conceptual framework that blends key ideas from cognitive, constructivist, and sociocultural theories. Elaborates on ways that…

Beliefs that psychometricians hold about learning were examined through telephone interviews with directors of testing from all 50 states and with a sample of test directors from 50 selected school districts. Interpretations of what these measurement specialists believed were based on reanalyses of the primary narrative interview data. A majority…