This clear, no-nonsense book guides current and future teachers through the concepts, tools, methods, and goals of classroom literacy assessment. The expert authors examine the roles of formative, summative, and benchmark assessments; demystify state and national tests and standards; and show how assessment can seamlessly inform instruction.…

This handbook presents an overview of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment and a description of the Writing Assessment. Districts are encouraged to use the procedures and methods described to create prompts and score writing samples as part of their district-level assessment program. After an introduction and overview of the Pennsylvania…

The author was asked to address the future of the field of learning disabilities (LD) from the perspective of a director of one of the five Institutes for Research on Learning Disabilities (IRLD) funded by the Office of Special Education Programs more than 25 years ago. The theme of each of the Institutes differed; the Minnesota IRLD focused on…

This study investigates relationships between teachers' receipt of high-stakes test score results of their students and subsequent changes in instructional and classroom assessment practices the following year. The sample consisted of 722 elementary, middle, and high school teachers. The results indicate that most teachers reported using the…

Three expert panels reviewed the 1991 Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) reading test. This was the first year of an assessment program designed to measure school progress toward, among other content areas, three reading outcomes: reading for literary experience, reading to become informed, and reading to perform a task. The…

Some fundamental assessment-related issues must be considered as states and localities refine and build upon existing assessment systems. First is the likely impact of increased high-stakes testing on industry-valued high school programs and their students. Data are inconclusive but suggest consequences of high-stakes testing on these programs and…

Measuring History complements the cases presented in Wise Social Studies Practices (Yeager & Davis, 2005). Yeager and Davis highlight the rich and ambitious teaching that can occur in the broad context of state-level testing. In this book, the chapter authors and I bring the particular state history tests more to the fore and examine how…