In recent years, increasing numbers of professional development programs have dealt with assessment literacy for teachers and/or administrators. Is assessment literacy merely a fashionable focus for today's professional developers or, in contrast, should it be regarded as a significant area of professional development interest for many years to…

When designing competency based education programs to meet state requirements, California educators would do well to select only a small number of highly significant competencies per basic skill area, for which they can devise on-target instruction and valid competency measures. (SJL)

Fewer competencies should be used as the organizing structure for teacher education programs, since all relevant topics cannot be covered thoroughly anyway. One variant of an outcomes-focused approach to teacher education is an objectives-oriented strategy. The criterion is not what the teacher does but what happens to pupils as a consequence of…