The standards-based educational reform initiatives of the 1990's call for assessment innovations to support high standards. To document state assessment policies and to develop policy recommendations for assessment innovations, the George Washington University Center for Excellence and Equity in Education surveyed state assessment directors in…

Tests can be categorized into two major groups: norm-referenced tests (NRTs) and criterion-referenced tests (CRTs). NRTs are designed to highlight achievement differences between and among students to produce a dependable rank order of students across a continuum of achievement from high achievers to low achievers. With NRTs, a representative…

Both norm-referenced and criterion-referenced interpretations of student, school, district, and state testing data can be improved by customizing the traditional norm-referenced test. Improvements that can be made include: (1) increasing the relevance of the test to the curriculum and (2) having greater confidence in the national comparative…

This digest summarizes the results of the latest annual survey of state teacher testing programs. State directors of teacher testing programs were contacted in the summer of 1989 and asked to update the data compiled by the American Institutes for Research in 1988. Data indicate that: (1) states commonly use admission tests for applicants to…

This paper presents six chapters that describe how statewide reading assessment is currently being performed and how the data are being used. The validity of statewide reading assessment instruments and the appropriate uses of statewide reading assessment data are explored. Several chapters discuss new ways in which some states conduct reading…