Increasingly, early education, regardless of setting type, is considered to be an educational intervention that sets the stage for children's long-term school success. Accordingly, policymakers are focused on how to develop and support educators who have the skills and capacity to deliver high-quality programming to children. A pressing question…

All students, including students with disabilities, participate in state accountability systems. Most students with disabilities participate in the regular assessment, with or without accommodations. Students with more significant cognitive disabilities participate in the alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards (AA-AAS). A…

The inclusion of students with disabilities in state and district assessments rests on a fundamental belief: all children can learn. This belief centers on all children who receive educational services, even those whose teachers and therapists work with them at home or in the hospital. The purpose of this chapter is to clarify the rationale for…

Inclusive assessment and accountability for all students with disabilities has been a significant focus of educators for the past six years. Yet only 35 states reported 1999-2000 test results for students with disabilities on some of their state assessments. Although the areas of assessment and accountability are just one focus of IDEA 1997 and…

Information from state assessment programs may be utilized to identify the characteristics of schools performing in an exemplary fashion, so that effective practices can be adopted and implemented in other schools. Various effective school practices and findings, revealed by school studies conducted in six states, are distilled in this paper. (AEF)

Examines the purposes of large-scale assessment programs, outlines the dangers and benefits of these assessments, considers the research evidence about the consequences of assessment, discusses how to evaluate assessment quality, and presents some ideas about the variables that influence the probabilities for good and bad assessment. (SLD)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the assessment procedures initiated and used by most Canadian provinces during the past decade to describe public school reading achievement, to identify commonalities and differences among those procedures, and to comment on the significance of the identified trends. The stated purposes of evaluation…

This report provides a comprehensive account of the performance of students with disabilities on state assessment measures. Following an overview of the issues, it explains the laws that govern the reporting of assessment results (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Amendments of 1997 (IDEA) and Title I of the Elementary and Secondary…

Sections 51215-51217 of California's Educational Code require that school districts in that state provide remedial instruction to students who do not pass district-developed proficiency tests. As a result of this requirement, school districts have had to create remedial courses for some 100,000 students who did not pass one or more tests in…

The costs and benefits of recent statewide and nationwide educational assessment programs are examined. The purpose of this paper is to present and substantiate some critical lessons and observations concerning: how the costs and benefits of large-scale assessments (LSAs) can be appraised, and the utility of this type of research to policymakers…

State education agencies are in increasing agreement regarding the basic principles that should underlie state educational assessment programs, though some areas of divergent opinion remain. The agencies generally accept the ideas that comparisons between states will be made, that assessment programs should serve multiple purposes, that meaningful…

This report provides a summary of the preliminary investigations conducted by the Early Literacy Workgroup in Maine's schools, and is designed to serve the following purposes: articulate a set of interrelated, common characteristics of successful literacy programs; extend to schools an invitation to dialogue about effective literacy practices and…

This paper discusses students with disabilities who do not fit into large-scale traditional assessment systems, seeks to clarify what is meant by "gray areas of assessment," delineates the primary issues that surround and contribute to gray areas, and provides suggestions for developing fully inclusive systems. It provides brief case studies of…

This review of the background and current status of state level activities in testing documents the shift in locus of educational control from local school districts to state agencies, the key dimensions characterizing such programs, factors influencing their implementation and their possible impact. (Author/AEF)

Offers a critical review of eight articles and two journal issues dealing with school indicators of student success or failure; state models for school improvement and accountability; teacher burnout as an outcome of paperwork burdens; the impact of reform efforts; class size; trends in educational evaluation; mastery testing; departmentalization…