Assessments labeled as formative have been offered as a means to improve student achievement. But labels can be a powerful way to miscommunicate. For an assessment use to be appropriately labeled "formative," both empirical evidence and reasoned arguments must be offered to support the claim that improvements in student achievement can be linked…

In response to concerns that Title I, the largest source of federal funding for education, was not significantly improving the educational achievement of at-risk students, Congress, in 1994, mandated major changes, including changes to the ways in which states measure student performance. This report provides a snapshot of how close states had…

Criteria are presented for determining whether licensure and/or achievement test results should be used for making various types of comparisons and judgments about medical education programs. The United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) and National Board of Medical Examiners tests (NBME) are then considered as data sources. (Author/MSE)

This paper describes an approach that states and local districts might use to develop a coordinated assessment system so that information collected at state and local levels about programs under Title I of the Improving America's Schools Act (IASA) would be complementary and not redundant. The reauthorization of Title I provides a unique…

Tennessee has adopted a model of educational accountability called the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS). The model attempts to measure district, school, and teacher effects on student academic gains, rather than emphasizing achievement scores at a single time, using data generated by a standardized test, the Tennessee Comprehensive…

The usefulness of authentic assessments as formative tools for teachers is well documented and supported. However, when educational institutions use these assessments as summative tools for evaluating programs and meeting accountability needs, several problems emerge. One set of problems relates to the difficulty of fitting authentic assessments…

The National Assessment Governing Board and the National Center for Education Statistics sponsored a Joint Conference on Standard Setting for Large-Scale Assessments to provide a forum for technical and policy issues relevant to setting standards at local, state, and national levels. Volume I contains an executive summary of the conference and…

General information about Steps 1 and 2 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) are offered to support proper use of the results for three general, nonlicensure applications: (1) evaluation of academic achievement; (2) program evaluation; and (3) selection for residencies. (Author/MSE)

Those who are charged with the evaluation of an educational program or school or effects of teaching often must consider how well students do on the variety of standardized tests they take in the course of a school year. This overview describes common types of tests students take in large-scale programs. Criterion-referenced tests are tests that…

Schools that are concerned with evaluating their programs need more than just the average scaled assessment scores from standardized tests. To help schools, the Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program produces school and district reports that contain the stories behind the averages. These reports describe the kind of students who took the…

This guide presents ways for practitioners to use Chapter 1 achievement data to better understand and evaluate elements of a Chapter 1 program. A variety of types and levels of questions can be addressed with achievement data. Combining standardized achievement test scores with data from the program and from the regular classroom greatly increases…

This guidebook shows how school district personnel from many areas--curriculum, instruction, supervision, staff development--can coordinate their activities to focus on instructional improvement. It reveals how data derived from tests, when properly used, can be useful in helping district personnel work with school and community people to assess…

The results of standardized tests are misused and often do more harm than good, according to William W. Cooley, professor and researcher at the University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania). The results seldom assist anyone in improving instruction. Too many out-of-school variables such as social-economic status influence test scores. Achievement is…

High-stakes assessments are those in which the results of tests or other measures can lead to decisions that may affect school administrators, teachers, and students substantially. Whether high-stakes assessment results in misleading information due to extraneous factors associated with the conditions under which the assessment occurs is explored.…

Individual standardized test scores in major school subjects can be combined to evaluate school programs and systems. Recently, Sweden experimented with such a practice. Test scores in different subjects (Swedish, English, mathematics) were gathered, units of different size (schools, municipalities, regions) were compared, and inter-school…