The Culture of Assessment Matrix is a one-page rubric intended to provide institutions of higher education with a simplistic way to quickly gauge the status of their institution's assessment culture and the degree to which the culture is an integral part of the institution's operations, expectations, methods of accountability, and reward systems.…

In an age of accountability, numbers matter. Therefore, the accountability movement has led to the assessment movement. Higher education should be held accountable, and colleges themselves should take the lead in making sure colleges are meeting goals. Assessment was originally meant to improve higher education. Instead, assessment quickly became…

Teacher-focused accountability started to ramp up in the United States in 2007-2010 as the focus of accountability shifted from schools to individual teachers. Since that time, there has been a remarkable amount of change to the way that teachers are evaluated, and music teachers have been placed squarely under the microscope of accountability. In…

Informed by the expertise and wisdom of thousands in its community, the Aurora Institute's 2022 federal policy priorities are a set of nine recommendations designed to ensure education systems move from the current state to future-focused systems capable of preparing all learners with building the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve lifelong…

Measures of student growth offer a richer understanding of student performance than a moment-in-time test score alone, but measures of student growth are not created equal. In their accountability plans for implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), some states are using a sophisticated analysis of multiple data points that evaluate the…

Schools are increasingly turning towards restorative practices as a pathway to building schools with stronger relationships, justice, and equity. While effectiveness studies are increasing, too little attention is focused on evaluating implementation. This resources is for audiences who evaluate implementation of whole school restorative practices…

In this study, it was aimed to examine the prospective teachers' preferences regarding group work, the process of structuring the group work, and assessment of their performance within the group. In the research, case study design was used. The participants of the study consisted of 62 prospective teachers studying in the Department of Early…

Initiatives to increase leadership accountability coupled with efforts to promote data-driven leadership have led to widespread adoption of instruments to assess school leaders. In this article, we present a decision matrix that practitioners and researchers can use to facilitate instrument selection. Our decision matrix focuses on the…

Competence-based, science e-testing (CBSeT) is a novel external assessment tool which provides feedback to science teachers about their students' competence-based skills, thereby giving relevant assessment information which teachers could potentially use in their teaching practice. The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which…

The voices of teachers experiencing and reacting to highly-publicized testing scandals are rarely heard, despite high-levels of criticism and blame from many stakeholders. Drawing on Foucault's conception of "disciplinary power" ("hierarchical observation," "normalizing judgment," and "examination")…

This qualitative multiple case study was based on in-depth interviews with participants from three different schools. Each school used a different High-Stakes Accountability Model for teacher evaluation: RISE Evaluation and Development (RISE), Teacher Advancement Program (TAP), and Peer Assistance and Review (PAR). The purpose of this study was to…

Evidence and use of standards have become buzz words in teacher education. In order to satisfy the policy requirements, meet accreditation standards, and respond to the critics of traditional routes of teacher preparation, teacher educators are attempting to balance their program philosophy with state and national standards in designing their…

This cross-case synthesis gives voice to evaluators in EC-12 and higher education settings who are enacting a state-mandated system of teacher evaluation and support by examining their perceptions of the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System (T-TESS). Questions addressed included: How do differently situated school administrators and…

A Vygotskian approach to assessment is proposed by invoking the distinction between the development of lower and higher psychological functions. Higher psychological functions are specifically human and develop with the use of cultural tools via mediation. Accordingly, a distinction is made between tests that are based on association, which have…

This report presents the background and subsequent founding of the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) Collaboration for Excellence in Educational Quality Assurance (CEEQA). CEEQA is the first collaborative of its kind, and seeks to help address accountability measures while being true to HBCU missions and culturally relevant…