Those who are charged with the evaluation of an educational program or school or effects of teaching often must consider how well students do on the variety of standardized tests they take in the course of a school year. This overview describes common types of tests students take in large-scale programs. Criterion-referenced tests are tests that…

This primer provides the basic information that teachers and tutors need to get started on the complex process of reading assessment. Designed for maximum utility in today's standards-driven classroom, the primer presents simple, practical assessment strategies that are based on theory and research. It takes teachers step by step through learning…

Educational policy makers in many countries recognize the need to focus their policies more directly on factors affecting the quality of teachers. Common to these policies are attempts to reform teachers' pay systems and career paths to place greater value on teachers' work and give stronger incentives for professional development. Investing in…

This paper discusses the rationale for designing better literacy assessment for elementary school children. The "Literacy Profile" is a literacy assessment procedure designed to collect data about groups of elementary students and track literacy development more effectively than current standardized tests. It assumes that literacy…

Portfolio assessment is an alternative form of assessment that is particularly attractive to adult, career, and vocational educators because it includes the assessment of active learning and performance rather than the mere recall of memorized facts. Portfolio assessment serves the interests of business and industry by forging a connection between…

Assessment of practice at diploma, degree, and postgraduate levels in nursing and midwifery education in Britain was the focus of a research study. Key issues from a critical review of literature on the assessment of theory and practice at different academic levels were as follows: lack of clarity in defining "levels"; inconsistencies in…

School researchers and administrators are developing new ways to measure student skills and progress, using portfolios, self-evaluation, verbal answers to mathematics problems, and other assessment formats. This book explains the assessment reform movement and describes programs across the country that have embraced new forms of assessment.…

Changes in assessment practices are central to ongoing reform efforts in science and mathematics education. The education community is currently focused on new ways to measure, evaluate, and report students' progress toward standards and learning goals. The focus of this publication, using assessment for informing and improving instruction is not…

In testing, educators have two competing intentions. They want to be fair in allowing students to demonstrate what they know without creating testing conventions and formats that let students pretend to know. Teaching-the-test literature shows that test scores can be inflated, meaning that they can go up without a generalized increase in…

This paper reports on the development and utilization of the professional portfolio in the University of San Francisco's (California) teacher education program. It reviews the rationale and guidelines for using this performance-based teacher assessment model, reports the results of a survey of 45 recent credential program graduates' use of the…

This book presents a rationale for learning-centered assessments in schools and an overview of the tools, techniques, and issues that educators should consider as they design and use assessments focused on learner needs. The proposals in this book are based on the premise that assessment should be deliberately designed to improve and educate…

This book discusses how to use everyday data to create strategies for educational improvement in schools. It provides users with a process for building a performance indicator system, identifying the most important aspects of a school's innovational efforts and traps to avoid that may lead to misinterpretation of data. The introduction identifies…

This comprehensive guide to alternative, authentic assessment in early childhood education provides discussions of the most current research and practical ways to integrate assessments into teaching. It shows assessment as a process that teachers can use in their own classrooms, using the latest procedures, such as portfolios, standards,…

A kindergarten teacher used authentic assessment--assessments carried out during creative learning activities that document growth and support further learning--to evaluate the social and emotional growth of students. Prior to the implementation of authentic assessment, the teacher had not used any form of systematic observation, recording, or…

This paper describes a plan for assessing academic and social growth of special education students. The targeted population consisted of six elementary students with hearing impairments and seven high school students with mental impairments. The problems of assessing special education students were documented through data collected from teacher…