This paper provides the current rationale and historical background for educational standards and discusses various meanings and interpretations attached to this term. It then provides a comparative analysis of these sets of publications that are seen as providing national standards for the American Association for the Advancement of Science…

In 1988, Congress mandated a national longitudinal evaluation of the effects of the Title I program on students' academic achievement and classroom behavior. This paper presents an overview of the study design, analysis methods, and impact results for student achievement. The analysis used four types of designs to assess the impact of Title I: (1)…

The president of the school board of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) Illinois mandated that the Student Assessment unit provide training for all CPS teachers on how to help their students score higher on standardized tests. This paper describes the two books developed as training materials and their preparation. The first step was a literature…

Following the style of the 1958 original, this third edition of the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability is both a standardized attainment test and a diagnostic test and thus can be used to assess reading progress objectively as well as to obtain structured diagnostic observations of an individual's reading behavior. This Reader contains narratives…

This paper examines the different strategies used to argue for and against testing of English Language Learners (ELL) in California. The study arose from protests directed at a California law requiring that a norm-referenced achievement test be used to assess school children on their mastery of basic skills. The paper describes the different uses…

This paper states that today's newspaper and educational journal articles complain that only half the school population can read on grade level. Yet standardized tests are written to spread pupils out from the first to the 99th percentile, or from three or more standard deviations above to three or more standard deviations below the mean.…

This booklet illustrates proven instructional strategies to help teachers help students raise their test scores. Techniques are outlined that will help students improve their communication skills, learn how to mediate their thinking strategies, and understand the best way to attack a question. The advice is developed in the structure of an…

This research project focuses on the problem of the inappropriate assessment of primary grade students. The targeted group was first graders in a suburban elementary school. While taking tests, students revealed a low performance in comparison with their daily performance. They also exhibited frustration and a high stress level. Current research…

The Reading Excellence program seeks to provide a cadre of trained volunteers to deliver tutorial assistance in reading to at-risk students during non-instructional times that will result in significant improvement in student performance on reading and language arts as measured by their age-appropriate standardized tests. This paper describes the…

There is a need for more precise descriptions of the claims to truth of standardized tests, of their interpretive authority, and of the limits of understanding which are reached through their processes. Typically minority students who score poorly on such tests do because their schools fail to connect with them. Pedagogy, therefore, must somehow…

Drawing from the latest research, this book explains how little standardized test results really say and how harmful a test-driven curriculum can be. The central message is that the use of standardized tests can be reversed, and that teachers, parents, and students can reverse the trend toward testing to create classrooms that focus on student…

This book examines the unhealthy and enduring obsession with standardized testing in the United States and how this tool of the meritocracy affects all U.S. residents, from kindergarten to job seeking. Why standardized testing continues to dominate the educational system is explored, as is why standardized testing is such a pervasive influence in…

Success for All is the most extensively researched of all comprehensive reform models for Title I elementary and middle schools. It incorporates scientifically based principles of reading, cooperative learning, professional development, tutoring, and family support. Missouri schools implementing the Success for All reading program once again made…

The North Carolina High School Comprehensive Test (HSCT)--Reading and Mathematics is currently being utilized to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind legislation of 2001. No Child Left Behind requires that, by the 2005-06 school year, each state must measure every child's progress in reading and math in each of grades 3 through 8 and at…

Eliminating social promotion, retaining students in grade, and using proficiency standards to determine students' progress through grades was intended to make schools accountable and increase academic achievement. Research evidence demonstrates that grade retention does not improve achievement and may increase the chances of a student dropping out…