This official scoring guide for writing presents details of the 6-point scoring system used in Oregon schools for the 1989-99 school year. It list attributes of students' responses to merit a score from 1 (lowest) to 6 (highest) in the areas of ideas/content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and citing sources. (RS)

In response to concerns that Title I, the largest source of federal funding for education, was not significantly improving the educational achievement of at-risk students, Congress, in 1994, mandated major changes, including changes to the ways in which states measure student performance. This report provides a snapshot of how close states had…

This document includes both a booklet and a presentation guide. The booklet contains the anchor papers used to score the 2001 Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) in writing, grade 4. Anchor papers are concrete examples that illustrate the intent of the scoring guides. The papers in the booklet exemplify the full range of score points…

This document outlines the test and item specifications for the Washington Assessment of Student Learning for seventh grade reading. It notes the purpose of this test is to measure Washington seventh grade students' level of proficiency in the Essential Academic Learning Requirements in reading, and that the reading test contains literary,…

Two assessment activities have been particularly useful at one urban university with an innovative general education curriculum: the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the use of rubrics to score student portfolios. This study analyzed NSSE data in relation to the portfolio scores on four general education learning goals in an…

This paper discusses the use of portfolios, performance assessments, and standards-based learning. The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education and other professional groups call for performance assessments that are as authentic as possible, and authenticity, in this context, means resembling real-world challenges. A portfolio is…

This paper makes the case that mandated tests, such as those administered through a state's accountability system, can best meet the goal of curricular reform by making their domains of learning targets transparent to users. Test maps are proposed as an effective device to accomplish that goal. A test map describes the content of the test and how…

This set of mini-lessons contains staff meeting activities to help a school's staff understand large-scale standards-based assessment and promote student achievement through improved classroom assessment practice. These lessons contain a clear statement of what teachers need to know and be able to do with respect to student assessment. They…

This book describes how examinations and national assessments can be used to encourage more pedgaogically sound teaching and learning. It provides concrete examples of ways to measure student learning and describes how to develop, score, and interpret tests to ensure that they are valid, reliable, and fair to all children. It offers techniques and…

This report presents (in a non-technical way) the process the Carnegie Hall program evaluators used to assess student learning during the 1996-1997 LinkUp! Program. Although the report contains documents that are specific to that particular year's theme, the process and examples included may be helpful to educators in other arts organizations who…

With a construct-centered reliability analytical approach the reliability analysis should crystallize the multi-traits or constructs that the test specialists developed to measure from student performance and then estimate the degree of fit between the theoretical expectations of test developers and the performance exhibited by students. This…

Student science journals were evaluated as an assessment tool to demonstrate student performance throughout the course and the opportunities students have to learn science in their classrooms. The study was conducted with 163 fifth graders from 7 classrooms, although 1 teacher did not collect student journals, reducing the sample size. Close and…

This book provides an overview of the rationale for and strengths and limitations of the use of performance tasks to assess student progress in mathematics. It also offers a field-tested process for developing performance tasks and rubrics, along with practical advice for evaluating student work and 20 sample tasks. The chapters are: (1)…

This booklet provides information and examples from the Mathematics Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) for elementary levels, given in the spring of 1998. These materials include the released items, anchor papers, and scoring guides. The MAP items consist of constructed responses and performance tasks from the state assessment. Anchor papers were…

This booklet provides information and examples from the Mathematics Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) for intermediate levels, given in the spring of 1998. These materials include the released items, anchor papers, and scoring guides. The MAP items consist of constructed responses and performance tasks from the state assessment. Anchor papers were…