U.S. public schools are engaged in an unprecedented effort to expand tutoring in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Broad-based support for scaling tutoring emerged, in part, because of the large effects on student achievement found in prior meta-analyses. We conduct an expanded meta-analysis of 265 randomized controlled trials and explore how…

This paper examines the reactions of English pupils who were preparing for GCSE and A-Level examinations to the 2020 exam cancellations resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, it addresses a gap in international research related to high stakes testing by presenting pupils' perspectives. It uses a Bourdieusian framework to explore the…

Background/Context: The target of assessment validation is not an assessment but the use of an assessment for a purpose. Although the validation literature often provides examples of assessment purposes, comprehensive reviews of these purposes are rare. Additionally, assessment purposes posed for validation are generally described as discrete and…

Having addressed variations of the question--How can a school's success be "measured"?--with mixed results across a collective five decades of service to boards, John Gulla and Olaf Jorgenson endeavored to develop a more helpful answer. To this end, they queried 200-plus leaders of California Association of Independent Schools…

The Academic Performance Index (API) is the centerpiece of California's state assessment and accountability system. With the recent passage of SB1458 and the pending reauthorization of both state and federal accountability legislation, there is now an unprecedented opportunity to improve the API for next generation accountability in California. In…

The Michigan Context and Performance Report Card measures school performance by adjusting standardized test scores to account for student background. Comparing schools using unadjusted test scores ignores the significant relationship between academic performance and student socioeconomic background--a dynamic outside a school's control. The…

The 2014 Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card is the Mackinac Center's second effort to measure high school performance. The first high school assessment was published in 2012, followed by the Center's 2013 elementary and middle school report card, which used a similar methodology to evaluate school performance. The…

The push for accountability in public schooling has extended to the measurement of teacher performance, accelerated by federal efforts through Race to the Top. Currently, a large number of states and districts across the country are computing measures of teacher performance based on the standardized test scores of their students and using them to…

This developmental evaluation used multiple methods to evaluate the implementation of a grading reform initiated by two math teachers in a large traditional middle school in greater Minnesota. The reform, titled "Grading for Learning," was developed based on a review of scholarly research and a collaboration of an interdisciplinary group…

Standardizing aspects of assessments has long been recognized as a tactic to help make evaluations of examinees fair. It reduces variation in irrelevant aspects of testing procedures that could advantage some examinees and disadvantage others. However, recent attention to making assessment accessible to a more diverse population of students…

The author reflects on his experiences with standardized tests, emphasizing the dreadful consequences of our continued allegiance to them. In doing so, the author expounds on how public schools have kowtowed to a harmful societal preference for results regardless of processes, decision-makers' desires to quantify learning, and the desires of…

Internationalization is possible, but the objectives need careful consideration. It is noted that the majority of countries do not have any form of test quality procedure and that only a small number have reviews, registration, certification, or some combination of these approaches. Internationalization could provide benefits at the least by…

This paper, commissioned by [National Postsecondary Education Cooperative] NPEC--Sample Surveys, considers issues important to any effort in which the [National Center for Education Statistics] NCES chose to engage the higher education community in a deliberative process that explores the development of data on student learning through a…

Many postsecondary institutions currently administer standardized tests of general college outcomes; more than a quarter of Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) member institutions do so. Using standardized tests for accountability purposes has been contentious mainly because these tests do not measure every important…

Assessing a high school's effectiveness is not straightforward. Comparing a school's standardized test scores to those of other schools is one approach to measuring effectiveness, but a major objection to this method is that students' test scores tend to be related to students' "socioeconomic" status--family household income, for…