In July 2010, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) voted to adopt Common Core's standards in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics in place of the state's own standards in these two subjects. The vote was based largely on recommendations by Commissioner of Education Mitchell Chester and then Secretary of…

The Talent Search model, founded at Johns Hopkins University by Dr. Julian C. Stanley, is fundamentally an above-level testing program. This simplistic description belies the enduring impact that the Talent Search model has had on the lives of hundreds of thousands of gifted students as well as their parents and teachers. In this article, we…

This paper first provides a critic of the implementation of compulsory national assessment protocols internationally, and then nationally through a review of the implementation process used for the introduction of National Standards in New Zealand, and National Testing in Norwegian mainstream schools. It then reviews the impact of these two…

This study examines the practical implications of using state tests to measure student achievement in impact evaluations that span multiple states and grades. In particular, the study examines the sensitivity of impact findings to (1) the type of assessment used to measured achievement (state tests or an external assessment administered by the…

Many articles and reports have reviewed, researched, and commented on international assessments from the perspective of exploring what is relevant for the United States' education systems. Researchers make claims about whether the top-performing systems have transferable practices or policies that could be applied to the United States. However,…

The U.S. Department of Education has not yet published an official guidance document for using NAEP achievement level scores to confirm state testing results. A review of the literature, however, identified four principles that inform the valid use of NAEP scores in a confirming analysis. The principles address the appropriate NAEP statistics to…

The state of Nebraska has adopted a unique approach to statewide reporting that requires school districts to develop district-level assessments of the state student content standards or district standards comparable in quality and to report the results to the state and public. This system allows districts to base their assessments on what they are…

The Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (CTBS) was administered to pupils in Grades 2 through 7, 9 and 11 during the 1979-80 school year as part of the Corvallis School District's testing program. Results of the CTBS, herein expressed as mean (average) percentile rank scores from each of the grades tested, are compared with those of prior years.…

Reanalyzed data evaluated by A. Amrein and D. Berliner, using a comparison group of states that did not attach consequences to their statewide tests. States that did attach consequences outperformed states that did not, showing meaningful carryover from attaching consequences to statewide testing. (SLD)

Reanalysis of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress continues to support the position that high-stakes tests do not do much to improve academic achievement. Data indicate that the extent to which states with high-stakes tests outperform those without remains indeterminable. (SLD)

This report examines the overlap between student test results on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) and the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL). The two tests were compared and contrasted in terms of content and measurement philosophy, and analyses studied the statistical relationship between the ITBS and the WASL. The ITBS assesses…

Created a developmental scale for the North Carolina End-of-Grade Mathematics Tests using a subset of identical test forms administered to adjacent grade levels with Thurstone scaling and Item Response Theory methods. Discusses differences in patterns produced. (Author/SLD)

This brief discusses ways to measure and report school quality. At present, the differences in state accountability systems make comparisons of schools and school systems very difficult. The most common approach to reporting school status is in the context of current status, an approach in which the school mean or median score for students in the…

Because districts in Nebraska are not measured on common instruments, comparisons are difficult. This study examined a district evaluation strategy that classifies districts into school performance ratings (SPR) based on a combination of three factors. Student performance and non-cognitive indicator data for three grade levels and two content…

Proposed an accountably model that addresses the challenges of allowing school districts to choose the specific strategies they use to measure student performance and evaluated this model using data from multiple sources for all school districts in Florida. Findings identify three strategies that would be useful for this type of accountability…