The Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA) program, written into the Every Student Succeeds Act, gives up to seven state educational agencies the opportunity to launch innovative assessment pilots in their public schools, with the goal of eventual statewide implementation. As of August 2020, the U.S. Department of Education had…

This paper presents an overview of New Hampshire's efforts to implement a pilot accountability system designed to support deeper learning for students and powerful organization change for schools and districts. The accountability pilot, referred to as Performance Assessment of Competency Education or PACE, is grounded in a competencybased…

The purpose of this study was to describe the measures used to evaluate principals in New Jersey in the first (pilot) year of the new principal evaluation system and examine three of the statistical properties of the measures: their variation among principals, their year-to-year stability, and the associations between these measures and the…

Federal policies (e.g., 2002 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act [ESEA] and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) posit that teacher quality is a potential leverage point for improving student achievement (U.S. Department of Education, 2010). Moreover, in the Race to the Top competition, teacher effectiveness must…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), signed into law in December 2015, is the latest reauthorization of one of the most influential pieces of federal education legislation, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The law had not been reauthorized since 2001 when the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was signed, and ESSA is the result of…

This rejoinder to Grant Wiggins on performance assessment suggests that true educational reform will undoubtedly be evidenced by something more substantial than pocket folders bulging with student work. Labeling performance tests "authentic" does not ensure their validity, reliability, or incorruptibility. Such tests are neither replacements nor…

Since 1987, Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) Public Schools' Propel project has been using student portfolios to integrate assessment with learning and is now piloting portfolio assessment for public accountability. Unlike Vermont's system, which asks for students' best work, Pittsburgh's assessment reflects what the community typically expects from its…

A 3-year pilot study of alternative assessments for over 500 beginning teachers revealed numerous possibilities, including high-inference classroom observations, semistructured interviews, structured simulation tasks, performance-based assessment center exercises, portfolios, videotaped teaching episodes, and revamped multiple-choice examinations.…

The effects of the genders of the assessor and the assessee on performance observation ratings of beginning teachers were studied in public schools in Louisiana. Data was collected in the pilot phase of the Louisiana Teacher Assessment Program for Interns, which included both teacher observation and structured interview. Of the assessees who…

Standardized testing, usually in the form of a multiple choice test, has dominated educational reform throughout Mississippi for the past 2 decades. Because of the minimal impact that standardized testing has traditionally had on curriculum decisions and classroom instruction, a paradigm shift in assessment format was adopted in the State from a…

The New Standards Project is a partnership of 17 states and 6 major school districts that have joined to develop alternative approaches to setting educational standards and assessing student achievement. In the New Standards Project plan, formal standard setting occurs through a process of public examination of student work products on pilot…

The purpose of this study is to document how member schools of the Boston Pilot Schools Network use authentic assessments to understand what their students know and can do. These principles not only reflect the belief that a student's learning must be measured in multiple, authentic ways, they also reflect the Network's focus on equitable…

Setting standards on performance measures is discussed in the context of the State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards (SCASS) initiative supported by the Council of Chief State School Offices. The usual item-based methods for standard setting, the methods developed by Nedelsky (1954), Angoff (1971), and Ebel (1972), were developed…

One of the major accomplishments of the New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officers has been the development of a set of standards describing what beginning teachers should know, be like, and be able to do. These standards have been translated into content-specific standards for…

This paper describes a framework for authentic instruction and assessment for the New York state alternative program of integrated mathematics, science, and technology (MST). The paper includes the rationale for the assessment framework, description of tasks, students' work, and suggested evaluation scheme. The MST framework consists of seven…