By 2008, according to this policy brief, half the states are likely to have adopted high-school exit exams. These exams, which students must pass to graduate, are part of state accountability systems and are above and beyond the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. This brief discusses high-school exit exams. It begins with answers to…

The Delaware Student Testing Program ties student achievement to the state's content standards that define the knowledge and skills Delaware students need to succeed beyond high school. This report explains the testing program and how to interpret it for administrators and boards of education. Each school receives English language and mathematics…

The Delaware Student Testing Program ties student achievement to the state's content standards that define the knowledge and skills Delaware students need to succeed beyond high school. This report explains the testing program to teachers and presents a guide to interpreting test results. Section 1 introduces the testing program, which tests…

This report provides important state-by-state information on the characteristics and performance of schools and students in each state, information that is vital to monitoring the progress and evaluating the success of local, state, and national education reforms. The report disaggregates student achievement data so that attention can be focused…

This document reports the levels of skill achievement by Florida students as measured by the High School Competency Test (HSCT) and explains the purpose, reporting, and use of HSCT test results. This test measures the ability of students to apply basic skills in communication and mathematics successfully in everyday life situations. Students in…

The 1997-98 school year was the 18th year of statewide student testing under the Arizona Student Achievement Program mandated by Arizona law. For the 1997-98 school year, students in grades 3 through 12 were tested using the Stanford Achievement Test, Ninth Edition (Stanford 9). This test was administered statewide to 536,254 Arizona students in…

Correlations of National Teacher Examination (NTE) Core Battery scores and college grade point average (GPA) with a measure of teaching effectiveness for 493 first-year teachers indicate that the correlation is higher for GPA than for the Core Battery. NTE core scores do not predict effectiveness better than GPA alone. (SLD)

A college faculty member who has graded Advanced Placement exam essays on U.S. government and politics, taken mostly by high school juniors and seniors, suggests that high school teachers and college faculty who assess the essays are not the best qualified persons to do so and that despite efforts to ensure consistency, the resulting scores are…

A faculty consultant to the Educational Testing Service for advanced placement (AP) test reading in U.S. government and politics responds to an article criticizing essay evaluation methods and criteria, finding in it a fundamental misunderstanding of the AP reading process and explaining why the essays are subject to less scrutiny for style,…

Explores issues of whose work is actually being evaluated when raters outside the classroom context make judgments about students based on work composed with the support of peers, teachers, and parents. Data from an evaluation of a statewide assessment and a study of scoring elementary school writing portfolios illustrate the issues. (SLD)

This review looks at the reform movements in the nation's two most populous states--Texas and California. Both states are in a desperate pursuit to demonstrate student competency of standards and achievement by way of student performance on standardized tests to meet federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) compliance. In examining the accountability…

Washington State University (WSU), has developed two large-scale assessment programs to evaluate student learning outcomes. The largest, the Writing Assessment Program, diagnoses student writing abilities at entry and mid-career to determine the type of support needed to navigate the expectations of our writing-rich curriculum. The second, the…

Calls for accountability in America's schools have created increased responsibilities for educational leaders. In this article, we describe and discuss a study of elementary, middle, and high school principals' perceptions of the state-wide educational accountability program in North Carolina. The respondents indicated that the state's…

Neither teacher-made tests nor the Scholastic Aptitude Test are appropriate for measuring the attainment of national education goals. Most practitioners involved in discussions of national high-stakes examinations argue that new tests are needed. A new system that preserves state and local autonomy in education as it measures the attainment of…

The DATAWave is a weekly publication of the Assessment Resource Office of Eastern New Mexico University (ENMU). Its purpose is to inform the campus community and broader constituencies about assessment issues and practice at ENMU. The issues of this first volume cover the following assessment topics: (1) introduction to the newsletter and report…