Summative assessments measure students' mastery of grade-level academic standards and skills in specific content areas after learning. State summative assessment systems provide students and families, school and district leaders, and state policymakers with valuable data to help understand student progress and school quality. This Policy Guide…

The purpose of this paper is to provide information and insight into how state assessment programs are governed, how individual state and state-consortium assessment programs actually operate, and how key policy and technical decisions on these programs are made. To address these issues, this paper is divided into three sections: First, the New…

In the fall of 2014, students took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) to help determine their level of readiness for college. The PSAT/NMSQT 2014 State Summary Reports summarize the characteristics, scores and educational plans of the Class of 2016 and Class of 2017.

In the fall of 2014, students took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) to help determine their level of readiness for college. The PSAT/NMSQT 2014 State Summary Reports summarize the characteristics, scores and educational plans of the Class of 2016 and Class of 2017.

The "Measuring College and Career Readiness" report for each state represents a snapshot of the ACT-tested graduates in the class of 2009 and focuses on their readiness for college and careers. Designed to inform policymakers and practitioners about selected indicators of effectiveness, the report is not intended to be comprehensive but…

Reports on an ongoing evaluation of the Vermont portfolio assessment program. Indicates that the positive news about the instructional effects of the assessment program are in contrast with the empirical findings about the quality of the data the program has yielded. (SLD)

Portfolios are the centerpiece of Vermont's statewide assessment program in mathematics. Portfolio scores in the first two years were not reliable enough to permit the reporting of student-level results, but increasing the number of readers or the number of portfolio pieces is not operationally feasible. (SLD)

This booklet is designed to help parents and community members answer questions about assessment in the context of the Vermont Framework of Standards, the Equal Education Opportunity Act of 1997, and other statewide initiatives. Assessment is changing in Vermont in response to new legislative mandates that call for standards-based assessment…

Twelve teachers and two principals from the Addison Northeast Supervisory Union School District (Vermont) met to consider what a small rural school district can do to assess its own programs and to discuss how to go about program assessment with the goal of helping schools become effective learning organizations. The district serves about 1,800…

In the initial article by Edward Roeber, performance assessment is defined as an exercise in which the student demonstrates specific skills and competencies rather than selecting one of several predetermined answers to an exercise. Such as assessment contains four components: (1) a reason for the assessment; (2) a particular peformance to be…

The 1992-93 school year saw the second statewide implementation of the Vermont portfolio-assessment program, and RAND continued its ongoing evaluation of the program's implementation, effects, and data quality. While the first year's study found evidence of the impact of the assessment program and low reliability of portfolio scoring, this year's…

This article examines one of the challenges to the integration of classroom and large-scale portfolio assessment, a challenge posed by the use of a student's classroom portfolio for large-scale assessment of his or her individual competencies. When work is composed with the support of peers, teachers, and parents, whose work is being judged? The…

The results of an evaluation of Vermont's statewide assessment initiative are presented, with information about the implementation of the program, its effects on educational practice, the analytic challenge presented by the portfolio scoring process, the reliability and validity of portfolio scores, and the tensions between assessment and…

The 1992-93 school year was the second year of the implementation of the Vermont assessment program. Evaluation of the 1991-92 year yielded mixed results, with some evidence that the assessment program was having a strong impact on instruction, but other indications that the reliability of the portfolio scoring in both writing and mathematics was…

The success of alternative assessments such as the Vermont Assessment Program (VAP) is heavily dependent on the involvement and commitment of teachers. This paper focuses on the implementation of the writing portfolio component of the VAP in the classrooms of four teachers who have different knowledge and beliefs about teaching and assessment. The…