When students fail an examination at the end of their first year, they are offered a resit examination, which they merely need to pass to progress into the second year. These resits anecdotally provide a dual purpose of testing that students have achieved the required level of attainment to progress, and incentivising additional effort. This paper…

Describes educational assessment in Singapore and discusses changes planned to focus assessment on more real-life situations while taking into account research on learning and critical thinking. (SLD)

In England and Wales, a National Curriculum initiated in 1988 was designed to ensure that all schools provided a curriculum which represented different areas of knowledge. The past 20 years has increasingly seen more emphasis on the link between the financial amounts spent on education and subsequent return on this money. The impact of the…

Five articles in this special issue present the approaches to accountability found in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland, provinces that represent 85% of all Canadian elementary and secondary school students. The articles are then discussed by representatives of four national Canadian educational associations. (SLD)

This document provides the following 13 conference papers: (1) "Introduction: Where Do We Go From Here?" (D. J. Bateson); (2) "The Context of Classroom Procedures in Evaluating Students" (R. J. Wilson); (3) "Student Evaluation in the Ungraded Primary School: The SCRP (Systematic Cumulative Record of Performance)…

Ontario's Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) is an independent agency, answerable to the public, created in 1995 in response to input from educators, policymakers, parents, students, and citizens to do large-scale assessments and give objective and informed recommendations for educational improvements. Gives EQAO core values and 10…

The purpose of this document is to provide teachers, administrators, students, and parents with samples of students' performances that exemplify standards in relation to the 1993 Grade 9 Science Performance-Based Assessment Tasks for the province of Alberta, Canada. A sample of 698 randomly selected students from 31 schools did the…

The way in which the partial credit model is being used in one large education system to analyze performance on standard assessment tasks undertaken by all students in their final year of high school is described. The assessment tasks include investigative projects, laboratory tasks, worked problems, drawings and studio work, essays, and…

The assessment programs of Alberta Education (Canada) are described, and the principles that guide these programs are reviewed. Alberta is committed to authentic assessment in its three major assessment programs: (1) the Diploma Examinations Program for certification in specific courses at the end of high school; (2) the Achievement Testing…

The national examination systems of Ethiopia and South Australia are compared with an eye toward identifying problems in the Ethiopian system. Authentic assessment, which has never been a part of the examination system of Ethiopia, should be introduced along with other innovations patterned on the Australian system. (SLD)

Several leaders in education have concluded that the United States should have some form of national achievement testing. Such tests are proposed as part of the "America 2000" education strategy. Believing that the experience of other countries will be useful to educators, policymakers, and concerned citizens, the National Endowment for…

A comprehensive overview of the current state of student assessment and a glimpse of the extent of student assessment in New York State (NYS), throughout the nation, and in foreign countries are provided. Background on existing testing programs in NYS and the assessment components of "A New Compact for Learning," a set of proposals from…

The annual report on achievement testing in Alberta (Canada) includes test results for third-grade students in language learning (for the regular English program), sixth-grade students in social studies, and ninth-grade students in science. Results are regarded in terms of curriculum standards, assessment standards, and achievement standards.…

The General Accounting Office (GAO), at the request of the House Committee on Education and Labor, Subcommittee on Elementary, Secondary, and Vocational Education, conducted studies on the extent and cost of testing in the United States, the experience of Canada in testing, and initial efforts to set standards for judging student performance on…

This report is aimed at helping Congress better understand the functions, history, capabilities, limitations, uses, and misues of educational tests; learn more about the promises and pitfalls of new assessment methods and technologies; and identify and weigh policy options affecting educational policy. To prepare this report, the Office of…