CCSSO [Council of Chief State School Officers] recently convened a wide range of stakeholders through the Certification and Licensure Collective (CLC) to support states to improve certification and licensure systems, including initial licensure, renewal, and reciprocity or teacher mobility. Educator micro-credentials are a critical part of this…

An effective assessment process can improve student performance, guide instructional decisions, and advocate for a music program. Strategies include designing and administering reliable and valid measures of student learning and using assessments to enhance feedback, longitudinal documentation of assessment results for accountability, and a…

Most states have developed or revised school accountability systems in response to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). While these systems include multiple indicators, to many stakeholders the outcome of central interest is the overall rating or classification produced for each school. These ratings are often used to identify schools that merit…

The availability of effective research-based interventions and practices within schools is a growing concern within the field of education. There remains a lack of interventions that have been fully evaluated for use within schools and by school personnel, particularly in the area of social skills interventions. Understanding the need for social…

Given the common problem of incoherence in district reform efforts, this qualitative study sought to understand what conditions enable (and/or constrain) the efforts of Technical Assistance Organizations (TAOs) to align their products and services with each other and with the specific goals of a district. This paper explores the complexity of TAOs…

Evocative evaluation of assessment data is essential to quantify the achievements at course and program levels. The objective of this paper is to design performance metrics and respective formulas to quantitatively evaluate the achievement of set objectives and expected outcomes at the course levels for program accreditation. Even though…

As states across the country continue their implementation of the Teacher Performance Assessment Portfolio (edTPA), a complex and high-stakes certification requirement for teacher certification, there are important lessons for educators and education advocates to learn from New York State's implementation. As Linda Darling-Hammond, developer and…

Assessment expectations are communicated to students in various ways and at different points in the semester. The provision of written information in learning guides given to students at the start of semester articulates what they are to do and how well they are to perform in assessment tasks. This paper examines how assessment expectations at an…

Exhibitions are public demonstrations of mastery that occur at culminating moments, such as at the conclusion of a unit of study, the transition from one level of schooling to the next, and graduation. Exhibitions require students to speak publicly, use evidence, present engaging visual displays, and otherwise demonstrate mastery to educators,…

This paper reports on the results of a 3-year study conducted at the Centre for Schooling and Learning Technologies (CSaLT) at Edith Cowan University in collaboration with the Curriculum Council of Western Australia which concerns the potential to use digital technologies to represent the output from assessment tasks in the senior secondary…

This article reports on the outcomes from the "e-scape Primary Scientific and Technological Understanding Assessment Project" (2009-2010), which aimed to support primary teachers in developing valid portfolio-based tasks to assess pupils' scientific and technological enquiry skills at age 11. This was part of the wider…

This paper describes an action research, school situated project conducted with partnership funding from Learning and Teaching Scotland, Scottish Qualifications Authority and Becta, the UK government's agency for communications technology in education. Based on "e-scape" (e-solutions for creative assessment in portfolio environments),…

Authentic assessment is a growing alternative to conventional testing. This research-to-practice article describes a framework for implementing authentic assessment. The R-E-A-L framework shows how roles, equipment, assessment tools, and location can be incorporated into early childhood practices.

Assessment models support the design of quality performance assessments. Assessment tools are being developed to enable easy and effective application of the models. Based on representations of assessment design knowledge and domain knowledge in ontologies, the tools provide guidance to assessment designers, and through constraint processing check…

Describes the implementation plans, experience, and results of incorporating performance measurement into the accreditation process of the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. Traces the evolution of standardized core measures known to be valid and reliable, noting political and technical problems in measure…