Recent years have produced a surge in interest in improving state assessment programs. Many states are designing new assessments. Much of this innovation is aimed at addressing longstanding areas of unhappiness with typical domain-sampled, end-of-year state assessments: States want to streamline assessment activities, enhance the instructional…

Summative assessments measure students' mastery of grade-level academic standards and skills in specific content areas after learning. State summative assessment systems provide students and families, school and district leaders, and state policymakers with valuable data to help understand student progress and school quality. This Policy Guide…

Public schools have, for generations, played a critical role in the lives of the vast majority of North Carolinians-they are ingrained into the fabric of identity as a state. Many of the issues in the Top Ten highlight where the erosion of the historic commitment to public schools for the public good is seen. The Public School Forum of North…

As the number of end of course (EOC) tests has increased along with an expansion of their role in accountability, development and implementation decisions are more important than ever. This process starts with articulating how the assessment fits into a credible theory of action that describes how all elements of the system will work together to…

State testing programs today are more extensive than ever, and their results are required to serve more purposes and high-stakes decisions than one might have imagined. Assessment results are used to hold schools, districts, and states accountable for student performance and to help guide a multitude of important decisions. This report describes…

This Brief builds on the work of the National Association of State Boards of Education 1997 Study Group on State Assessment Systems by examining one of the state board actions that is most likely to capture the publics attention: setting cut scores on state assessments. This process involves a large measure of human judgment and politics and a…

This paper focuses specifically on paper and pencil testing as a tool contributing to a quality teaching force. Information is presented for those who have responsibility or interest in state level policies for using such tests to promote educational quality. Using institutional stages of a teacher's career as an organizing scheme for test use,…

Several forces are driving Alaska's school accountability initiatives. These include: (1) the Legislature's passage in 1997 and 1998 of the High School Graduation Qualifying Examination (HSGQE) and other accountability measures; and (2) the passage by the U.S. Congress of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. In the past, schools excluded some…

The Kansas Minimum Competency Testing Program is designed to provide the public, the Kansas State Board of Education, and the Kansas legislature with descriptive profiles of student performance relative to minimum competencies in reading and mathematics. Results of the 1982-83 assessment are presented in this report. Included are overall test…

The National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (NJCLD) is a national committee representing 11 organizations concerned about individuals with learning disabilities. Approximately 350,000 individuals constitute the membership of the organizations represented by NJCLD. The NJCLD considers and discusses contemporary issues in learning…

This technical report describes the development of the College-Level Academic Skills Test (CLAST), an instrument designed to measure Florida college students' achievement of the computation and communication skills expected by the completion of their sophomore year. Section I covers CLAST's background and purpose, the requirement that all students…

This booklet provides parents, teachers, administrators, and policymakers with information about achievement testing which is relevant to their needs. The first section presents an overview of the current market for standardized achievement tests and provides key definitions, distinctions between ability and achievement testing, comparisons of…

Aspects of practical assessment such as question design and management of the assessment are discussed. Reference is made to some of the problems and to the possibilities for innovation as a result of implementing practical assessment of the kind required by the General Certificate of Secondary Education examining groups. (CW)

This report presents the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) performance results to state officials and the public as required by state law. Compiled in two volumes, TAAS results are aggregated and reported for the state as a whole, for education service centers and individual districts, and in district demographic groupings. This volume…

The goal of this monograph is to explain the evaluation program designed by Schaumburg Community Consolidated District 54, Schaumberg, Illinois. It discusses the process used in the development of the model, the product, the implication for classroom teachers and the effects of using an evaluation to assess science process skills. The process…