Following a critique of so-called educational testing, this article examines three "educationally noteworthy school testing programs"--those of Portland, Oregon; Orange County, Florida; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and one noteworthy school with no standardized testing: the Prospect School in Bennington, Vermont. Derives some broad…

Professional literature extols the potential benefits of portfolios for teaching, learning, and assessment--particularly compared with traditional multiple-choice tests. Although initial findings favor portfolio assessments, the challenges lie in ensuring technical quality, equity, and feasibility for large-scale assessment purposes. Two major…

Describes two types of criterion-referenced testing that districts can use to measure achievement outcomes of their instructional programs: a random sampling assessment plan and an item-response theory assessment plan. (Author/JM)

Responding to doubts about the validity of test results that showed the Pittsburgh School District's school improvement project to be highly successful, the district validated its results by administering a different test to a representative sample of students in secure conditions. (MCG)

Assessment for learning involves the frequent, continual use of both formal and informal classroom assessments. It can be as simple as requiring students to respond to a lesson-embedded, one-item quiz as a way of gauging student understanding of what is being taught. Ideally, this innovative approach to classroom assessment is based on a careful…

Teachers must learn to distinguish among performance assessments of different quality and appropriateness. Design criteria (cognitive complexity, linguistic appropriateness, content quality and coverage, and meaningfulness) are judged by examining assessment tasks and scoring rubrics. Effects criteria (transfer, generalizability, instructional…

Research suggests that special tests of reasoning ability are superfluous. Reading comprehension and algebra scores on common aptitude and achievement tests are highly correlated with scores on several reasoning tests. Furthermore, three programs in reasoning skills have been shown to improve reading comprehension scores in various settings. (MCG)