No Child Left Behind (NCLB) cemented a standardized testing assessment culture in the United States but research has highlighted the inequities (Au, 2020; Dixon, 1978; Grodsky et al., 2008; Khan, 2020; Moses & Nanna, 2007), unreliability (Hunt et al., 2010; Pizmony-Levy & Green Saraisky, 2016) and negative impacts (Berryhill et al., 2009;…

What is Goal Attainment Scaling? In this article, Lee Ann Jung defines it as a way to measure a student's progress toward an individualized goal. Instead of measuring a skill at a set time (for instance, on a test or other assignment), Goal Attainment Scaling tracks the steps a student takes over the course of a year in a targeted skill. Together,…

Student ratings are not leaving today or anytime soon. However, as the title of this article indicates, student ratings are not the only option to provide evidence in the evaluation of teaching. There is a broad range of alternatives to consider beyond student ratings in the delicate decision-making processes to improve teaching and determine the…

Knowing assessment practices of teachers and improving in this direction is important in increasing students' learning and demonstrating their performance. In this research, the aim was to identify the classroom assessment practices used by primary, secondary and high school teachers. Survey and observation form were used to collect the data for…

Relying on teachers' assessments for the information currently provided by standardized test scores would save instructional time, better capture the true abilities of diverse students, and reduce the problem of teaching to the test. A California high school is implementing standards-based reporting, ensuring that teacher-issued grades function as…

The author discusses the importance of listening to children and engaging them in dialogue about their learning. She does not accept that assessment should entail labelling children and believes such practices encourage a culture of fixed "ability" thinking. Through examples of specific children, the author illustrates the importance of…

Does assessment change what is being taught? Laurie Occhipinti uses an analogy to answer this question. While conducting research on economic development in a remote rural area of the Argentine Chaco, a community had received some public funds to construct a new community center. They discussed where to place the center. The middle of the village…

Formative assessment is a classroom practice that has received much attention in recent years for its established potential at increasing student learning. A frequent analytic approach for determining the quality of formative assessment practices is to develop a coding scheme and determine frequencies with which the codes are observed; however,…

A proposal is presented to assess teacher's performance based on the aspects that educational research has found as fundamental to achieve students' learning. The proposal is aimed mainly at teachers and people responsible for teacher's assessment programs. After criticizing the traditional way of assessing teacher's performance, it is shown a…

In this response to Burdick et al. (2013), the author describes two possible and perhaps even common reactions to the article by Burdick et al. (2013). Advocates such as Way, Davis, and Strain- Seymour (2008) will likely applaud the development of the Writing Ability Developmental Scale and the possible widespread use of computer-based writing…

Author Jonathan Howland writes here that he is hardly the first to suggest that much of the testing going on in the educational system today appears dumb. The tidal change that brought schools the Common Core standards is a maneuver born of an admission: educators took their eye off the ball, testing for too much of the wrong thing--thin skills…

This article raises questions about the use of needs assessment by those seeking to improve the performance of organizations and individuals. While the discrepancy model of needs assessment has enjoyed a long history and is widely accepted, the author states that it has several undesirable consequences in terms of its impact. This article offers…

Community college students are often placed in developmental math courses based on the results of a single placement test. However, concerns about accurate placement have recently led states and colleges across the country to consider using other measures to inform placement decisions. While the relationships between college outcomes and such…

There is a need for more comprehensive assessments of young children's emerging print knowledge. Traditional letter and numeral identification assessments score children's responses as either correct or incorrect and this approach can underestimate what children know. The present study tested an assessment scale that scored three- and…

Research examining the contexts that influence the use of learner-centered assessment (LCA) practices in undergraduate courses has not kept pace with those focusing on teaching practices. Such research is needed given that conceptualizations of effective pedagogy generally include both teaching and assessment. The authors examined a range of…