Relates the author's experiences teaching remedial reading in a Texas high school, where the state-mandated exit-level competency test heavily influences teaching. Discusses negative effects on students and on teachers. Describes how the author's teaching evolved from an emphasis on this basic skills test to a focus on engaging students in…

Discusses curriculum-based measurement as an alternative to both standardized and teacher-developed reading tests. Oral Reading Fluency, a curriculum-based measure of reading is presented as an accurate indicator of both general reading ability and reading comprehension, and as a means of monitoring reading progress towards functional literacy.…

Today's school tests and surveys collect a wide variety of personality and opinion data on student proclivities, social attitudes, and parent-inculcated world views. Personality testing poses a threat to family privacy and students' future employability. Nearly anyone can access personal and sensitive student information and use it to target…

Third International Mathematics and Science Study results show that high-scoring states and schools do not need standards; low scorers have too many other pressing problems to utilize standards. Recent studies indicate that the proportion of college students requiring remedial courses has been exaggerated by critics. (MLH)

Investigates in the refugee/immigrant population in the open-admissions college at the University of Minnesota, the relationship between educational background in the native language and second language, English language proficiency as measured by a standardized language-proficiency test, length of residency in the United States, and academic…

Describes an experiment designed to introduce aspects of quantitative reasoning to a large, substantively-focused class in the social sciences. Reveals that participating students' abilities to interpret and manipulate empirical data increased significantly, independent of baseline SAT verbal and mathematics scores. Discusses implications for…

Examines people's typical queries about a child's performance, school success or failure, best learning practices, and ways to determine educational effectiveness. To provide useful information about student achievement, an accountability system must embody clear standards that have been communicated to students, parents, teachers and other…

Maintains that standardized testing undermines efforts for quality teaching and learning in public schools. Discusses the misconceptions behind the focus on testing and why testing does not improve student achievement or schools. Reviews the efforts and sacrifices teachers, parents, and students have made in resisting standardized testing. (CMK)

Today's teachers are unprepared to meet increasingly complex assessment challenges. The poor state of assessment literacy arises from naive assumptions about standardized testing and student motivation, fear of being held accountable for student achievement, parents' nostalgic views of testing, and confusion over achievement expectations for high…

Debunks some goofy ideas--notions that schools control our economic destiny, money matters not in education, and American students' performance is uniformly dismal on international standardized tests. The United States offers more educational opportunities than other nations. Detractors and advocates of public education are given Rotten or Golden…

This article examines assessment instruments, measurement considerations, and factors that affect understanding of a child's creativity. It compares strengths and weaknesses of methods of assessing creativity and lists more than 60 standardized assessment measures. Procedures for using formal and informal measures in the decision-making process…

Introduces a collection of articles on accountability, testing, and academics in schools with minority group and low-income students. The articles share the common viewpoint that there have been, and will continue to be mixed effects of accountability on educational equity in schools and districts. (SM)

Presents an urban practitioner's reaction to arguments about the positive effects of accountability policy on improving educational equity for minority and low income students. Recounts the Houston Independent School District's experiences with accountability and suggests that high levels of learning for all students has become the new civil…

Studied the validity of teacher judgments based on the Work Sampling System (WSS), a curriculum-embedded performance assessment for preschool to grade 5. Results for 345 K-3 students in 17 classrooms demonstrate that the WSS correlates well with a standardized, individually administered psychoeducational battery and is a reliable predictor of…

Discusses three ways for teachers to affect standardized measures of student achievement: teach only students demographically predisposed to higher scores; cheat; or establish a challenging, integrative, and exploratory curriculum. (JPB)