Implications of the multiple-use of accountability assessments for the process of validation are examined. Multiple-use refers to the simultaneous use of results from a single administration of an assessment for its intended use and for one or more additional uses. A theoretical discussion of the issues for validation which emerge from…

A particular trait of the educational system under socialist reign was accountability at the input side--appropriate facilities, centrally decided curriculum, approved text-books, and uniformly trained teachers--but no control on the output. It was simply assumed that it met the agreed standards, which was, in turn, proven by the statistics…