In 2019, Drew H. Gitomer, Dan Battey, and José Felipe Martínez published a paper detailing apparent violations of fundamental principles and norms in the reporting of technical information about the edTPA, a widely used high-stakes assessment for teacher licensure. In this article, they describe and criticize the lack of appropriate response to…

The Every Student Succeeds Act gives states greater flexibility in designing educational policy, but questions remain about whether and how states will use this opportunity to design truly innovative new policies to support higher levels of student learning. The authors describe how educational leaders in four states--California, Iowa, New…

Relying on teachers' assessments for the information currently provided by standardized test scores would save instructional time, better capture the true abilities of diverse students, and reduce the problem of teaching to the test. A California high school is implementing standards-based reporting, ensuring that teacher-issued grades function as…

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind, large-scale assessments have come to play a central role in federal and state education accountability systems. Teachers and parents have expressed a number of concerns about their state testing programs, such as too much time devoted to testing and the high-stakes use of testing for teacher evaluation.…

As teaching has become a major focus, teacher evaluation is currently the primary tool being promoted to improve it. Thus, most states are dramatically overhauling their evaluation systems for teachers and administrators. What we really need is the conception of teacher evaluation as part of a teaching and learning system that supports continuous…

Two tests intended to measure student achievement of the Common Core State Standards will face intense scrutiny, but the test makers say they will include performance assessments and other items that are not multiple-choice questions. Incorporating performance items on this tests will bring up issues over scoring, costs, and validity.

The authors detail their summer long pointed discussion with the Obama Administration--via an exchange of letters and telephone conversations--over initiatives in New York and other states that tie the evaluations of teachers and principals to student performance on standardized tests. The authors assert such initiatives should await further…

The New York Performance Standards Consortium includes urban public high schools that have successfully used a performance-based assessment option. Instead of exit exams, student assessments are based on specific performance-based assessment tasks. These schools have shown that it is possible to use qualitative data to make substantive decisions…

Describes several lessons learned from the design and implementation of a performance-measurement system required by the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994. For example, very complex systems of performance measurement can compromise the quality and quantity of data obtained. Makes several recommendations to improve the quality of such…

Designed to monitor school accountability, KIRIS (Kentucky Instructional Results Information System) offers a powerful lesson about how high-stakes accountability systems can distort and undermine original visions for effective curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices. Changes have been influenced by several interconnected elements:…

Higher education's presence in school reform is limited because many university people equate reform with lowered standards and instrumental knowledge, view portfolios as complicating the admissions process, and have low expectations for the secondary school system. Oregon's Proficiency-based Admission Standards System (PASS) is a state-mandated…

Responding to Gregory Cizek's critique of the "faddishness" of direct assessment methods, this article urges a more constructive debate about the pressing issues of costs versus benefits, the place of face validity in test design, the differing needs in assessment data reporting, and assessment methods that actually improve school…

Building on New York State's long tradition of involving teachers in developing and evaluating state examinations, the standards-based prototypes developed through the Goals 2000 New Assessments Project relied on teachers to score exams, using guides and rubrics. The process helped teachers clarify goals and expectations, deepen disciplinary…

A "successful intelligence" intervention improved school achievement for a group of 225 ethnically diverse third-graders, both on performance assessments measuring analytical, creative, and practical achievements and on conventional multiple-choice memory assessments. Teaching for triarchic thinking facilitates factual recall, because learning…

Lists 10 conditions essential to a school's readiness to explore alternative assessment methods, including desire for better assessment information, insufficiency of current assessment method, staff and parent openness to innovation, conceptual clarity, assessment "literacy," clarity about desired student outcomes, unsuitability of present…