It is difficult to know the information that should be included on state report cards to enable comparisons among school districts and among different states. There may be many problems with such report cards, ranging from the possibility of computer error to the chance of reporting test scores that are not reliable or valid or the use of tests…

Papers presented at the annual meeting of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research present diverse views on assessment in the context of proposals for national testing in primary schools in New Zealand. Also of widespread interest as the conference was developed was the restructuring of secondary school examinations. The papers are: (1)…

This brief addresses the benefits and concerns raised by the use of high stakes testing as the centerpiece of new accountability systems. It offers some recommendations for policymakers seeking to incorporate such tests into state accountability systems. High stakes tests can clarify and establish challenging performance expectations for students,…

This brief makes the case for thoughtful district- or school-driven assessment systems that complement and go beyond what statewide testing systems are able to accomplish. It describes important attributes of model local assessment programs and presents the necessary steps for building a local assessment program that will elicit information that…

Under a Congressional mandate, the General Accounting Office (GAO) studied the costs of implementing tests that will be required under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA) and the reauthorization of the Title I program. In passing the legislation, Congress increased the frequency with which states are to measure student achievement in mathematics…

This year marks the seventh edition of the "Summary of State Student Assessment Programs" (SSAP) and the third year that the Council of Chief State School Officers has conducted the survey on which the summary is based on its own. The survey summarizes what is happening in statewide assessment programs and provides information on trends…

This discussion of high stakes tests explores criticisms commonly made of the use of these tests and suggests some additional reasons educators and the public should not rely on high stakes tests as the single source of data about student achievement. The United States has no national educational policy on standards of knowledge. Each state is…

As education policymakers have moved to reform K-12 public education, the roles of test publishers in assessment have expanded. In the last two decades these expanded roles have coincided with the movement of assessment to the center of education reform initiatives. The drive for improvement in public education has made the roles of test…

This study determined whether using ACT Assessment Composite score, high school grade average, or both predictors jointly for college admissions would result in differential prediction or differential outcomes for traditional-aged and nontraditional-aged students. The analyses were based on data from 112,341 students at 79 postsecondary…

Achieving a fair and objective evaluation of teacher performance is not easy. Student test results have been used to assess teacher performance, but this approach has many weaknesses, especially because students differ from school to school and standardized tests are open to questions about their fairness. Criterion-referenced tests have been…

This paper is designed to initiate discussion about new educational accountability systems and the implications of these systems for educator preparation. Accountability systems are often developed with little regard to a clear definition of accountability, but once the systems are in place, and states are showing (realistic or political)…

This document describes the development of an instrument designed to assess the implementation of a professional learning community among school staff. It describes the growing need for such instruments as schools increasingly deviate from traditional approaches in education in their efforts to enhance student learning. An instrument that could be…

Drawing on the collective experience of the researchers, their work with teachers and principals, and their previous research in urban schools where students are predominantly Mexican American, this essay outlines the ways in which the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) harms the educational quality and opportunity of minority,…

This "toolbox" offers suggestions about how and when to create objective tests. Such tests are sometimes a quick way to find out how students are doing, and sometimes they help students focus on what they are doing in class or help teachers define the content that is worth knowing. The following suggestions are offered for developing objective…

The focus of this research was to examine the perceived effectiveness of the Practical Assessment Exploration System (PAES) (J. Swisher, 1987) for making educational decisions at the instructional program level for students with disabilities across groups of teachers who have various levels of familiarity with the PAES. The PAES is a functional…