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…

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…

The absence of universally accepted definitions for direct and indirect assessment motivates the purpose of this article: to offer definitions that are literature-based and theoretically driven, meeting K. Lewin's (1945) dictum that, "There is nothing so practical as a good theory" (p. 129). The authors synthesize the literature to…

In music education, current attention to student-centered approaches for learning affects our understanding of student assessment. This view to curriculum reform requires new perspectives for assessment. There is a need to move beyond the summative use of assessment to assign grades to examining the roles of assessment in supporting and enhancing…

The renewal of the secondary school physics teaching program was initiated in 2008, however, there is limited research investigating physics teachers' enactment of the teaching program in their classes. The purpose of this study was to identify and describe teachers' views about the official teaching program and its implementation. The…

In this study, an attempt was made to develop a method of measurement and evaluation aimed at overcoming the difficulties encountered in the determination of the effectiveness of chemistry education based on the goals of chemistry education. An Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which is a multi-criteria decision technique, is used in the present…

This handbook is designed as a quick reference for first-year teachers who find themselves in an assessment driven environment with little experience to help make sense of the language, underlying philosophy, or organizational structure of the assessment system. The handbook begins with advice on developing and evaluating effective learning…

Assessing educational outcomes is a matter of great importance for everyone in a society that relies primarily on public schools to shape the next generation of citizens. Given the vital nature of this task, it is imperative that the researchers who undertake it have an informed understanding of the measures used to evaluate educational outcomes.…

Professor Postman is in agreement with Professor Gagne's view that valid measurement of learning outcomes is an essential part of the evaluation of educational systems. The paper stresses that the categorization of outcomes and measuring operations should be regarded as flexible heuristic devices, and that it is desirable to guard against the risk…

This booklet is designed to assist those responsible for conducting educational evaluations. The work contains a collection of recently developed technical procedures relevant to educational evaluation and to describe them in a straightforward manner. The guidelines are organized into three sections: 1) Objectives; 2) Measurement; and 3) Data…

This document introduces a study conducted by the National Council of Social Studies (NCSS) to review, interpret, and disseminate findings of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments in citizenship and social studies. The study represents an investigation funded by the Education Commission of the States and coordinated by…

Suggests that in order to evaluate the effectiveness of instructional procedures for the production of students who can both critically analyze and produce ideas, science teachers need to re-examine their measurement procedures in the light of the "new science curricular goals. Examples of test items that fit the "new curricular philosophy and…

Majority of testing programs is designed to demonstrate the superiority of performance of one student over another rather than evaluate the degree to which an individual has mastered specific skills. The necessity of changing this orientation is discussed. (RW)

This report of a study conducted by the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) reviews, interprets, and disseminates findings of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments in citizenship and social studies. The study represents an investigation funded by the Education Commission of the States and coordinated by a…

The first part of Task 1 of the final report provides a critique of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) objectives. The report represents part of an investigation coordinated by a special Steering Committee working under the auspices of the National Council for the Social Studies. The first section examines whether the objectives…