When students put down their pencils at the end of Connecticut's testing each year, another intensive process begins. Hundreds of trained evaluators work day and night for about a month to score the written responses. Although expensive, the use of open-ended questions drives the kind of instruction that state leaders say they want in their…

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education in the United States issued a report called "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform." This report and other policy initiatives such as the No Child Left Behind Legislation recommended that the individual states institute assessments to hold schools accountable.…

This general achievement trends profile includes information that the Center on Education Policy (CEP) and the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) obtained from states from fall 2008 through April 2009. Included herein are: (1) Bullet points summarizing key findings about achievement trends in that state at three performance…

This general achievement trends profile includes information that the Center on Education Policy (CEP) and the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) obtained from states from fall 2008 through April 2009. Included herein are: (1) Bullet points summarizing key findings about achievement trends in that state at three performance…

This general achievement trends profile includes information that the Center on Education Policy (CEP) and the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) obtained from states from fall 2008 through April 2009. Included herein are: (1) Bullet points summarizing key findings about achievement trends in that state at three performance…

This general achievement trends profile includes information that the Center on Education Policy (CEP) and the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) obtained from states from fall 2008 through April 2009. Included herein are: (1) Bullet points summarizing key findings about achievement trends in that state at three performance…

Title I provides extra instructional services designed to raise achievement for low-performing students in schools with relatively high poverty rates, and for all students in many of the nation's highest-poverty schools. To learn more about how well Title I students are performing academically, the Center on Education Policy (CEP) compared…

This report contains details of the results of the Primary Assessment Program conducted in 1991 in urban and non-urban schools in the Northern Territory of Australia. The assessment program, conducted annually at years 5 and 7 in urban schools and at ages 10 years and above in non-urban schools, monitors achievement in English and mathematics. In…

The Minnesota Board of Teaching adopted the Pre-Professional Skills Tests (PPST) for initial teacher licensure as required by the State Legislature. A 1987 validation study set qualifying scores for reading, mathematics, and writing. This report evaluates the 4-year administration of the PPST, using data from 1987-91 that were analyzed according…

Focusing on one of the critical questions in the shift to new forms of assessment, researchers, policymakers, and teachers met at the 1993 Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) to consider equity in assessment. The opening remarks of CRESST co-director Robert Linn stressed that equity is at the center of…

The National Academy of Education Panel is providing the intellectual leadership and coordination for an independent evaluation of the 1990 and 1992 Trial State Assessments (TSA) of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). These instruments provide state-by-state comparisons of educational achievement, which is the first such use of…

The Delaware Educational Assessment Program publishes annual results from the California Test of Basic Skills by district, school, and grade (1 through 8 and 11). A statewide computer information system was developed to manage the testing program, the massive 10-year longitudinal database, and the information requests received. The Delaware…

Procedures for establishing the cutoff scores for the occupational competency exams administered to individuals graduating from Pennsylvania vocational teacher education programs were reviewed. A total of 595 National Occupational Competency Testing Institute (NOCTI) Exams administered in 43 occupations or trades at three colleges between the…

The licensure of public school personnel in Tennessee is a function of the State Department of Education (SDE). Additional requirements for this certification function were added by the Comprehensive Education Reform Act (Senate Bill Number 1) of the 1984 Tennessee General Assembly. The Act mandated that the SDE use tests to assess the competence…

Proficiency testing, the measurement of what a person can do as a result of learning, is used increasingly in higher education to determine whether students have mastered basic skills or whether they deserve credits for specific courses (which they may not have actually taken). The motivation for proficiency testing stems from general…