Fitness assessment can be an important and useful component of physical education. This article discusses how to avoid the pitfalls that lead to negative student experiences with fitness assessment and presents research-based suggestions for creating a positive experience for all students. A section to help teachers understand how to use fitness…

Federal education legislation continues to emphasize the role of assessment in elementary and secondary schools. Perhaps most prominently, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA; P.L. 114-95), requires the use of test-based educational accountability systems in states and specifies the…

Personalized learning (PL) is spotlighted as a way to transform K-12 educational systems. PL customizes learning pace, instructional methods, and learning content to individual students. As much as PL sounds promising and complex, little guidance is available to educators and policymakers about how to effectively design PL. Five essential features…

The well-being and accomplishment of all Montana students is vital to the future success of the state. More specifically, increasing academic achievement and providing all students with a quality education will result in the opportunity for students to have more choices beyond their K-12 experience. This is what the business of education is all…

The Indiana Department of Education, at the direction of Phyllis Lewis, commissioned the National Association of Peer Programs (NAPP: formerly known as the National Peer Helpers Association) and the authors listed above to develop a rubric for peer helping programs. Development of the rubric began with a review of the NAPP Programmatic Standards…

A school superintendent gave his board a competency test. The idea was to get the members to learn more about the uses of tests and to provide subjects for in-service programs for the members. A portion of the test is included. (IRT)

Discusses the relationship of selected school environment factors to the implementation of an innovative benchmark testing program. Reviews the research and investigates the relationships of principals' and teachers' stages of concern about benchmark testing and the involvement level, knowledge, staff development activities, and grade levels…

Describes Nebraska's School-based Teacher-led Assessment and Reporting System (STARS), a criterion-referenced assessment system that measures school and district performance over time. (PP)

Concerned about inappropriate uses of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, the Leander Independent School District developed a Total Quality application to guide instruction for individual students. Focusing on learning instead of testing, the new system consists of comprehensive language arts and mathematics assessments completed by students…

For the last 10 years, the Duval County School System (Jacksonville, Florida) has accumulated extensive student performance data with its district-wide criterion referenced testing program (the Essential Skills Test for K-6 students and the Minimum Level Skills Test for grades 7-12), which tests over 100,000 students yearly. The research project…

The characteristics of three threshold loss agreement indices which reflect the agreement or consistency in assignment to mastery-nonmastery status are reviewed. These are proportion of agreement, coefficient kappa, and modified kappa. (Author/MT)

Describes two types of criterion-referenced testing that districts can use to measure achievement outcomes of their instructional programs: a random sampling assessment plan and an item-response theory assessment plan. (Author/JM)

In Canada, tests and test results do not appear to be driving the school system. Canadian universities do not require Canadian applicants to provide SAT or ACT scores for admission. Most provinces administer their own testing programs aimed at all students, not only the college bound. Developing the whole child is an important objective. (MLH)

Outcome-based education is rooted in earlier ideas, such as Tyler's objectives, Spady's outcomes, Glaser's criterion-referenced measurement, Bloom's mastery learning, 1970s accountability concerns, and the 1960s competency-based education movement. Minnesota's experience suggests various practical implementation challenges concerned with…

In this discussion of whether youth fitness tests should be evaluated with norm-referenced standards or criterion-referenced standards, it is pointed out the the suitability of the test depends upon the purpose for which the test is administered. A high level of physical fitness is linked with health, at least in adults, which suggests that…