A well-designed accountability policy has four essential elements: (1) it's grounded in the belief that all students can learn and succeed; (2) it measures the academic progress of all students by campus and district over time; (3) it highlights gaps between different groups of students; and (4) it provides support and assigns consequences to…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine how faculty chairs at a large, Midwestern community college understand and engage with the assessment of student learning outcomes within academic programs. This study was informed by two conceptual paradigms of assessment: accountability and improvement. Sensemaking was used as a…

When seen in a positive light, accountability systems are understood as a means for promoting transparency, improvement, responsibility and commitment to valuable goals, thus ensuring that State funding is invested in initiatives that are beneficial to all citizens. However, in education, there is extensive evidence about the negative effects of…

Assessment of student learning is typically undertaken with at least two goals in mind, accountability and improvement. This dichotomy of purpose has dogged assessment from the outset (Ewell, 2009) and contributed to conflicted or incomplete ends. As Banta and Palomba (2015) concluded, assessment undertaken primarily to comply with accountability…

This paper explores how data-driven practices and logics have come to reshape the possibilities by which the teaching profession, and teaching professionals, can be known and valued. Informed by the literature and theorising around educational performativity, the constitutive power of numbers, and affective responses to data, it shows how…

This report presents changes in educator and student outcomes for HISD, Achieve 180 Program schools, and non-Achieve 180 comparison schools which were Title I, Part A campuses for the fifth year of the program. Positive effects of the Achieve 180 Program were observed although there were still challenges which Achieve 180 Program schools needed to…

Although the importance of assessment on education is undebatable, the intentions of assessors while conducting assessment haven't been studied yet in detail. To this end, this study aimed to disclose pre-service and in-service English teachers' conceptions of assessment. In the study, conception of assessment was categorized under four main…

Although the importance of assessment on education is undebatable, the intentions of assessors while conducting assessment haven't been studied yet in detail. To this end, this study aimed to disclose pre-service and in- service English teachers' conceptions of assessment. In the study, conception of assessment was categorized under four main…

School closures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have dramatically changed the conditions in which students learn and experience schooling. Disparities in students' access to learning and in their academic outcomes are likely to exacerbate longstanding challenges and inequities. Now more than ever, educators need information that will help…

This study examines the perceptions of Jordanian science teachers' conceptions of assessment, and how these perceptions are affected by the teacher's gender, length of experience, and subject variables. The teacher conception of the assessment questionnaire was completed by 488 teachers. It consisted of 27 items spread over four dimensions: school…

Competence-based, science e-testing (CBSeT) is a novel external assessment tool which provides feedback to science teachers about their students' competence-based skills, thereby giving relevant assessment information which teachers could potentially use in their teaching practice. The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which…

"The Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA) was signed into law by President Barack Obama on December 10, 2015. ESSA reauthorizes the "Elementary and Secondary Education Act" (ESEA), which was first enacted as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's "War on Poverty." Since 1965, ESEA has represented the federal government's…

The link between health and learning is clear: healthy, active and well-nourished children are more likely to attend school, be ready to learn and stay engaged in class. Yet far too many students--particularly low income students and students of color--spend their days in buildings with unhealthy air, have limited opportunities for physical…

As more people question the value of standardized testing, the public appetite for a change in the accountability system grows. A 2016 national survey found that "voters consider standardized tests the least important factor in measuring the performance of students," preferring instead to have a multiple-measures data dashboard of…

In September 2015, Commissioner Candice McQueen and senior leadership at the Tennessee Department of Education laid out goals and priorities for Tennessee's students and a plan to reach these goals. This strategic plan, Tennessee Succeeds, aimed to give a clear, overarching vision for the key strategies the department would focus on in order to…