Testing and data integrity on statewide assessments is defined as the establishment of a comprehensive set of policies and procedures for: (1) the proper preparation of students; (2) the management and administration of the test(s) that will lead to accurate and appropriate reporting of assessment results; and (3) maintaining the security of…

This manual is designed to assist educators in using the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) Alternate Assessment, an assessment intended to allow students with the most significant disabilities to participate in MCAS. The manual provides guidelines, materials, and procedures necessary for the preparation of student portfolios for…

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…

To help teachers, administrators, and parents understand student performance in writing, a state-level report is prepared each year to analyze students writing scores and provide guidelines for the interpretation of the results. This report compares students scores on the 2001 Delaware Student Testing Program (DSTP) with scores on the 2000 DSTP…

Since the passage of the 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, inclusion of all students with disabilities in accountability systems has been mandatory. By 2001, school personnel began to understand that alternate assessment needed to focus on students' performance on state standards, and nearly all states had created…

In 1998, the Kentucky legislature made adjustments to the assessment and accountability system established by the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 to create a new system, the Commonwealth Accountability and Testing System (CATS). The Kentucky Core Content Tests (KCCT) are a component of CATS. KCCT assessments are given in grades 4, 5, 7, 8,…

Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) assessments are criterion-referenced performance tests designed, developed, and implemented by the Maryland State Department of Education in collaboration with classroom teachers and other Maryland educators. MSPAP is the major strategy for implementing Maryland's educational reform…

Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) assessments are criterion-referenced performance tests designed, developed, and implemented by the Maryland State Department of Education in collaboration with classroom teachers and other Maryland educators. MSPAP is the major strategy for implementing Maryland's educational reform…

Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) assessments are criterion-referenced performance tests designed, developed, and implemented by the Maryland State Department of Education in collaboration with classroom teachers and other Maryland educators. MSPAP is the major strategy for implementing Maryland's educational reform…

This document contains materials directly related to the actual reading test of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA), including the reading rubric, released passages, selected-response questions with answer keys, performance tasks, and scored samples of students' responses to the tasks. All of these items may be duplicated to…

This official scoring guide for writing presents details of the 6-point scoring system used in Oregon schools for the 1989-99 school year. It list attributes of students' responses to merit a score from 1 (lowest) to 6 (highest) in the areas of ideas/content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and citing sources. (RS)

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…

This paper makes the case that mandated tests, such as those administered through a state's accountability system, can best meet the goal of curricular reform by making their domains of learning targets transparent to users. Test maps are proposed as an effective device to accomplish that goal. A test map describes the content of the test and how…

This guide explains results and other information in the "Test Item Analysis Report," the "School Report," and the "District Report" for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests for spring 2000. It is designed to help superintendents, principals, and other administrators as they review the…

This paper describes the scoring of the upper levels of the Career Ladder system for teachers in the Tennessee Career Ladder Evaluation Systems. The instruments used to evaluate teachers include classroom observation, dialogue with the teacher, a peer questionnaire, student questionnaires, a professional skills test, professional development and…