The Every Student Succeeds Act requires that states make efforts to offer statewide achievement tests in languages, other than English, that are present to a significant extent in the state. Currently, four states offer Spanish reading or language arts assessments as part of their statewide testing program. In these states, practitioners may be…

Education officials have long hoped that the statewide academic assessments most students take each year could be used not only for accountability but also to guide instruction. Congress established the Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA) program in 2015 to help address this goal, offering up to seven states temporary flexibility…

This appendix volume supplements "Evaluating the Federal Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority: Early Implementation and Progress of State Efforts to Develop New Statewide Academic Assessments. Evaluation Report. NCEE 2023-004" analyzing the early progress of the first five assessment systems participating in the Innovative…

Purpose: This study, a post hoc observational one, attempted to determine if career and technical education (CTE) students in the state of Mississippi would academically benefit from taking multiple formative assessments in an online format prior to completing their summative exams. Most CTE students in the state of Mississippi are required to…

Tens of thousands of students in the Houston area switched schools during the school year annually. In moving from one school to another, students often experienced disruptions to their education. This study examined what this mobility meant for students' performance on state accountability tests, high school grade retention, high school dropout,…

This study examined the implementation of high-stakes adoption of edTPA® in one state in the year prior to consequential use of edTPA scores for teacher licensure. Using a mixed methods design, we investigated concerns of coordinators who were responsible for edTPA implementation in their institutions. We utilized the Concerns Based Adoption Model…

High-stakes, standardized testing plays an important role in the lives of many students as they apply to college and compete for scholarships. In states where college readiness measures, like the ACT® test, are used for school and district accountability, the ACT scores of all students, whether college-bound or not, are a top priority for school…

Test security has increased in importance in the last few years given high-profile cases of educator misconduct. This paper provides a review of state test security statutes and regulations related to statewide achievement testing using as a framework recent best practices reports by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education…

This article proposes that sampling design effects have potentially huge unrecognized impacts on the results reported by large-scale district and state assessments in the United States. When design effects are unrecognized and unaccounted for they lead to underestimating the sampling error in item and test statistics. Underestimating the sampling…

This article reports on the collaboration of six states to study how simulation-based science assessments can become transformative components of multi-level, balanced state science assessment systems. The project studied the psychometric quality, feasibility, and utility of simulation-based science assessments designed to serve formative purposes…

Items on test score scales located at and below the Proficient cut score define the content area knowledge and skills required to achieve proficiency. Alternately, examinees who perform at the Proficient level on a test can be expected to be able to demonstrate that they have mastered most of the knowledge and skills represented by the items at…

The bookmark standard-setting procedure is an item response theory-based method that is widely implemented in state testing programs. This study estimates standard errors for cut scores resulting from bookmark standard settings under a generalizability theory model and investigates the effects of different universes of generalization and error…

Two methods to establish a common scale across grades within a content area using a common item design (separate and concurrent) have previously been studied under simulated conditions. Separate estimation is accomplished through separate calibration and grade-by-grade chained linking. Concurrent calibration established the vertical scale in a…

How state educational authorities in Kentucky use statewide test data to rank the state's 178 school districts was studied, using data from the "Kentucky Essential Skills Test: Statewide Testing Results" (1987). The methods used, means of refining those methods, the fairness/accuracy/validity of resulting interpretations, and problems…

Studied the beliefs and practices of 31 teachers about classroom assessment and the Washington state assessment program. Data reveal teachers' preferences for multiple assessments, their objections to the state test for certain groups of students, and their preferences for specialized assessments respectful of student circumstances and readiness.…