Describes United States literacy characteristics, based on April 2000 reports from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Discusses Angoff methods for evaluating validity of high-stakes testing programs in Massachusetts and Virginia. (MLH)

Argues that high-stakes testing is inconsistent with the National Science Education Standards' goals regarding what students are taught about the nature and purposes of science. (Contains 23 references.) (Author)

Describes the work of the Literacy Unit of the New Standards Project and uses that description to raise a broader set of issues about assessment in the K-12 English language arts. Notes that the performance assessment uses on-demand tasks lasting three to five days and involves the reading of a selection and writing of an essay and portfolios. (RS)

The British debate over whether college teaching faculty should also be allowed to test their students, or to participate in curriculum design, is examined in the context of the history of British higher education. The evolution of an external, relatively standardized testing system to promote consistency in achievement standards is chronicled.…

The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System is a damaging and dangerous "reform" with fundamental flaws: assumptions that all children undergo the same developmental process and that everyone requires the same knowledge to be successful; the fact that the guide and exams cover irrelevant material; and the idea that testing is…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was put forward by President Bush to end what he called "the soft bigotry of low expectations." The Act passed Congress with broad bipartisan support, with many legislators agreeing to NCLB's testing regimen in exchange for White House promises of specific budget increases, embodied in the form of…

This article contains summaries of reports from international research correspondents (IRCs) as part of the continued effort to make the International Reports on Literacy Research, a regular feature of "Reading Research Quarterly," more representative of the field of literacy education. With an eye toward encouraging the IRCs to report…

From President Bush on down, the pressure is on to fix America's high schools. Despite a broad consensus that something is seriously wrong with the institution, deep fault lines remain about the remedies. Part of the reluctance to address high schools has been their complexity. The sheer size, departmental structure, mission creep, and other…

Nebraska's approach to standards, assessment, and accountability, the School-based Teacher-led Assessment and Reporting System (STARS) is based upon local control and the belief that classrooms and teachers must be at the heart of student learning and accountability. STARS relies on locally-developed assessment systems to accurately measure and…

The purpose of this study was to assess how well the ASSET, COMPASS, and in-house readiness tests actually do in their placement of students into the algebra developmental courses. Specifically, the author collected and analyzed student data from these placement tools and the core final exams for MTH 03 and MTH 04 to determine how well these…

Recent focus on student achievement and the effectiveness of schools, school boards, and teachers has lead to increased demands for accountability in education. Large scale assessments are now used in most provinces in Canada to examine the degree to which educational standards are being reached and explore issues of accountability. Alternative…

Current educational policy highlights the important role that assessment can play in improving education. State standards and the assessments that are aligned with them establish targets for learning and promote school accountability for helping all students succeed; at the same time, feedback from assessment results is expected to provide …

Since 1959, ACT has collected and reported data on students' academic readiness for college. Because becoming ready for college is a process that occurs throughout elementary and secondary education, measuring academic performance over time in the context of college readiness provides meaningful and compelling information about the college…

This paper presents strategies that address the needs of the school district assessment office for standardized procedures to support reliable and efficient test processing and reporting and that meet the needs of school staff for test administration guidelines. The key to test administration and processing quality is a knowledgeable test…

This annual statistical report profiles General Educational Development (GED) Test takers in 1995. At the beginning of the report are the following: an introduction to the GED testing service, the Center for Adult Learning and Educational Credentials, and the American Council on Education; a description of how the data were gathered; suggestions…