Standardized Tests

Two experiments are reported which test the effect of increased three-term contingency trials on students' correct and incorrect math responses. The results warrant further research to test whether or not rates of presentation of three-term contingency trials are predictors of effective instruction.

The authors investigated the hypothesis that treatment acceptability influences teachers' use of a formative evaluation system (curriculum-based measurement) and, relatedly, the amount of gain effected in math for their students.

The “Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing” were approved as APA policy by the APA Council of Representatives in August 2013. 

This study evaluated the relationship between scores on high stakes test and scores on other measures of learning such as NAEP and SAT scores.  In general,  there was no increase in student learning as a function of high stakes testing.

The purpose of this study is to assess whether academic achievement in fact increases after the introduction of high-stakes tests. The first objective of this study is to assess whether academic achievement has improved since the introduction of high-stakes testing policies in the 27 states with the highest stakes written into their grade 1-8 testing policies.

This book was designed as an assessment of standardized testing and its alternatives at the secondary school level.

In current study, through a meta-analysis of 78 studies, it is aimed to determine the overall effect size for testing at different frequency levels and to find out other study characteristics, related to the effectiveness of frequent testing. 

There is also little or no evidence for the claim that teachers will be more motivated to improve student learning if teachers are evaluated or monetarily rewarded for student test score gains. 

Standardized tests play a critical role in tracking and comparing K-12 student progress across time, student demographics, and governing bodies (states, cities, districts). One methodology is to benchmark the each state’s proficiency standards against those of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test.  This study does just that.  Using NAEP as a common yardstick allows a comparison of different state assessments. The results confirm the wide variation in proficiency standards across states.  It also documents that the significant majority of states have standards are much lower than those established by the NAEP.

Describes the ways in which accountability methods were built into practicum experiences for specialist- and doctoral-level school psychology trainees at the University of Cincinnati. 

A brief history of high-stakes testing is followed by an analysis of eighteen states with severe consequences attached to their testing programs.

The later effects of the Direct Instruction Follow Through program were assessed at five diverse sites. Low-income fifth and sixth graders who had completed the full 3 years of this first- through third-grade program were tested on the Metropolitan Achievement Test (Intermediate level) and the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT).

This paper uses student-level data from a statewide community college system to examine the validity of placement tests and high school information in predicting course grades and college performance.

As 2021 begins, we can’t make assumptions about what students have learned this school year. Education leaders and teachers, of course, have interacted with students and watched them through computer screens for many months — but we won’t truly know what happened and where learning gaps exist without statewide exams.

Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002 and its 2015 update, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), every third through eighth grader in U.S. public schools now takes tests calibrated to state standards, with the aggregate results made public. In a study of the nation’s largest urban school districts, students took an average of 112 standardized tests between pre-K and grade 12.

This article reports on a 4-year longitudinal study of the effects of Literacy Collaborative (LC), a schoolwide reform model that relies primarily on the oneon-one coaching of teachers as a lever for improving student literacy learning.

Firm evidence shows that formative assessment is an essential component of classroom work and that its development can raise standards of achievement, Mr. Black and Mr. Wiliam point out. Indeed, they know of no other way of raising standards for which such a strong prima facie case can be made. 

The Hexagon Discussion and Analysis Tool helps organizations evaluate new and existing programs and practices. This tool is designed to be used by a team to ensure diverse perspectives are represented in a discussion of the six contextual fit and feasibility factors.

Over the objection of the teachers' union, the Board of Education here on Thursday unanimously approved the nation's largest merit pay program, which calls for rewarding teachers based on how well their students perform on standardizes tests. 

The goal of this paper is to estimate the extent to which there is differential attrition based on teachers' value-added to student achievement.

This paper examines New York City elementary school teachers’ decisions to stay in the same school, transfer to another school in the district, transfer to another district, or leave teaching in New York state during the first five years of their careers.

By estimating the effect of teacher attributes using a value-added model, the analyses in this paper predict that observable qualifications of teachers resulted in average improved achievement for students in the poorest decile of schools of .03 standard deviations.

This article is an extended reanalysis of high-stakes testing on achievement. The paper focuses on the performance of states, over the period 1992 to 2000, on the NAEP mathematics assessments for grades 4 and 8.

This fourth edition provides in-depth treatments of critical measurement topics, and the chapter authors are acknowledged experts in their respective fields. 

This book divides itself naturally into two parts. The first part has to do with the situation in which Superintendent Brooks found himself, with his successful campaign in educating his teachers to use standardized tests, with the results which he obtained, with the way he used these results to grade his pupils, to rate his teachers, and to evaluate methods of teaching, and finally with the use he made of intelligence tests.

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) assesses teaching practice based on videos and essays submitted by teachers. They compared the performance of classrooms of elementary students in Los Angeles randomly assigned to NBPTS applicants and to comparison teachers.

This paper review the main (four) critiques that have been made of international tests, as well as the rationales and education policy analyses accompanying these critiques. This brief also discusses a set of (four) critiques around the underlying social meaning and educational policy value of international test comparisons. These comparisons indicate how students in various countries score on a particular test, but do they carry a larger meaning? This paper also have some recommendations based on their critiques. 

This study developed a zero-to-five index of the strength of accountability in 50 states based on the use of high-stakes testing to sanction and reward schools, and analyzed whether that index is related to student gains on the NAEP mathematics test in 1996–2000.

This paper discusses the search for a “magic metric” in education: an index/number that would be generally accepted as the most efficient descriptor of school’s performance in a district.

This report provides a practical “management guide,” for an evidence-based key indicator data decision system for school districts and schools.

With Congress moving rapidly to revise the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), no issue has proven more contentious than whether the federal government should continue to require that states test all students in math and reading annually in grades three through eight.

The most recent incarnation of ESEA, signed into law in January of 2002 by President George W. Bush, is the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). We’re now 13 years into NCLB, so reauthorization is long overdue. It is not just the long delay that argues for congressional action, but the extent to which the Obama administration has replaced the provisions of the bill with its own set of priorities implemented through Race to the Top and state waivers. 

In this report, the author aim to provide an accessible introduction to these new measures of teaching quality and put them into the broader context of concerns over school quality and achievement gaps.

One flashpoint in the incendiary debate over standardized testing in American public
schools is the area of test preparation. The focus of this chapter is test preparation in achievement testing and it's purportedly harmful effects on students and teachers. 

The Proficiency Illusion reveals that the tests that states use to measure academic progress under the No Child Left Behind Act are creating a false impression of success, especially in reading and especially in the early grades.

special education as a problem solving the nature of mild handicaps person-centered versus situation-centered problems. 

Three concurrent validity studies were conducted to determine the relationship between performances on formative measures of reading and standardized achievement measures of reading.

On several issues, our analysis teases out nuances in public opinion by asking variations of questions to randomly selected segments of survey participants. We divided respondents at random into two or more segments and asked each group a different version of the same general question.

Based on the experiences of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and reviews of literature addressing implementation failures, observations about failures to "scale up" are presented.

Curriculum-based measurement and performance assessments can provide valuable data for making special-education eligibility decisions. Reviews applied research on these assessment approaches and discusses the practical context of treatment validation and decisions about instructional services for students with diverse academic needs.

The theory that measuring performance and coupling it to rewards and sanctions will cause schools and the individuals who work in them to perform at higher levels underpins performance based accountability systems. Such systems are now operating in most states and in thousands of districts, and they represent a significant change from traditional approaches to accountability.

A disproportionate reliance on SAT scores in college admissions has generated a growing number and volume of complaints. Some applicants, especially members of underrepresented minority groups, believe that the test is culturally biased. Other critics argue that high school GPA and results on SAT subject tests are better than scores on the SAT reasoning test at predicting college success, as measured by grades in college and college graduation.

High-quality assessments are essential to effectively educating students, measuring progress, and promoting equity. Done well and thoughtfully, they provide critical information for educators, families, the public, and students themselves and create the basis for improving outcomes for all learners. Done poorly, in excess, or without clear purpose, however, they take valuable time away from teaching and learning, and may drain creative approaches from our classrooms.

This systematic review synthesizes the findings from 30 studies thatcompared the performance of students at schools using single‐trackyear‐round calendars to the performance of students at schools usinga traditional calendar.

This report focuses on the performance of U.S. students2 in the major subject area of reading literacy by presenting results from a combined reading literacy scale and three reading literacy subscales: access and retrieve, integrate and interpret, and reflect and evaluate

This assessment of the reliability and validity of skills analysis programs within curriculum-based measurement (CBM), with various groups of handicapped and nonhandicapped youngsters, indicated that the skills analysis programs in spelling and math provided consistent information that related well to the primary graphed CBM scores.

30 special education teachers were assigned randomly to 3 groups: curriculum-based measurement (CBM) with expert system advice (CBM-ES), CBM with no expert system advice (CBM-NES), and control (i.e., no CBM). 

This study assessed the effects of expert system instructional consultation within curriculum-based measurement (CBM). 

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of using computer software to store, graph, and analyze student performance data on teacher efficiency and satisfaction with curriculum-based progress-monitoring procedures.

Examined the role of skills analysis (SA) in curriculum-based measurement (CBM) for the purpose of developing more effective instructional (mathematics) programs. 30 special education teachers implemented 1 of 3 treatments for 15 wks with a total of 91 mildly and moderately handicapped pupils. 

This study examined the effectiveness of innovative curriculum-based measurement (CBM) classwide decision-making structures within general education mathematics instruction, with and without recommendations for how to incorporate CBM feedback into instructional planning.

The purpose of this study was to investigate technical features of a curriculum-based measurement (CBM) system that addresses a concepts and applications mathematics curriculum (i.e., number concepts, counting, applied computation, geometry, measurement, charts, graphs, money, and problem solving).

The purposes of this study were to examine how well 3 measures, representing 3 points on a traditional-alternative mathematics assessment continuum, interrelated and discriminated students achieving above, at, and below grade level and to explore effects of cooperative testing for the most innovative measure (performance assessment).

This study assessed the efficiency of and teacher satisfaction with curriculum-based measurement (CBM) when student performance data are collected by teachers or by computers. 

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of (a) ongoing, systematic assessment of student growth (i.e., curriculum-based measurement) and (b) expert system instructional consultation on teacher planning and student achievement in the area of mathematics operations.

Although recent data indicate that the learning losses this fall, compared with the same period last year, have not been as dire as predicted, those results likely mask high numbers of missing kids — children who lack technology for online learning or whose parents are unable to supervise their remote schooling.

The entrenchment of standardized assessment in America's schools reflects its emergence from the dual traditions of democratic school reform and scientific measurement. Within distinct sociohistorical contexts, ambitious testing pioneers persuaded educators and policymakers to embrace the standardized testing movement.

High-school grades are often viewed as an unreliable criterion for college admissions, owing to differences in grading standards across high schools, while standardized tests are seen as methodologically rigorous, providing a more uniform and valid yardstick for assessing student ability and achievement. The present study challenges that conventional view. The study finds that high-school grade point average (HSGPA) is consistently the best predictor not only of freshman grades in college, the outcome indicator most often employed in predictive-validity studies, but of four-year college outcomes as well.

In one three-week period, a pandemic has completely changed the national landscape on assessment.

This study examined the academic and demographic profile of the pool of prospective teachers and then explored how this profile is affected by teacher testing.

This paper provides the first empirical examination of National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) ratings,  beginning with a descriptive overview of the ratings and documentation of how they evolved from 2013-2016, both in aggregate and for programs with different characteristics.

Examined the forecasting accuracy of 2 slope estimation procedures (ordinary-least-squares regression and split-middle trend lines) for reading curriculum-based measurement (CBM), a behavioral approach to the assessment of academic skills that emphasizes the direct measurement of academic behaviors.

This report provides information about new teachers' preparation experiences and explores
whether particular types of experiences are related to teachers' effectiveness in improving
their students' test scores. Prior research indicates that teaching effectiveness is the largest
in-school factor affecting student achievement.

This policy proposal I suggest (1) reforms to ensure that the Title I formula gets enough resources to the neediest areas, and (2) improvements in federal guidance and fiscal compliance outreach efforts so that local districts understand the flexibility they have to spend effectively. These are first-order issues for improving high-poverty schools, but so deeply mired in technical and bureaucratic detail that they have received little public attention in the re-authorization process.

A significant and eye-opening examination of the current state of the testing movement in the
United States, where more than 150 million standardized intelligence, aptitude, and
achievement tests are administered annually by schools, colleges, business and industrial
firms, government agencies, and the military services. 

Discusses the uses and abuses of intelligence testing in our educational systems. Dr. Goslin
examines teachers' opinions and practices with regard to tests and finds considerable
discrepancies between attitude and behavior.

This study examines whether the results of standardized tests are distorted when rewards and sanctions are attached to them.

In schools throughout the country, it is testing season--time for students to take the Big Standardized Test (the PARCC, SBA, or your state's alternative). This ritual really blossomed way back in the days of No Child Left Behind, but after all these years, teachers are mostly unexcited about it. There are many problems with the testing regimen, but a big issue for classroom teachers is that the tests do not help the teacher do her job.

When schools pushed the pandemic pause button last spring, one of the casualties was the annual ritual of taking the Big Standardized Test. There were many reasons to skip the test, but in the end, students simply weren’t in school during the usual testing time

This paper describe a few promising assessment technologies tat allow us to capture more direct, repeated, and contextually based measures of student learning, and propose an improvement-oriented approach to teaching and learning. 

Test-based accountability systems that attach high stakes to standardized test results have
raised a number of issues on educational assessment and accountability. Do these high-
stakes tests measure student achievement accurately? How can policymakers and
educators attach the right consequences to the results of these tests? And what kinds of
tradeoffs do these testing policies introduce? 

The every student succeeds act (ESSA), passed into law in 2015, explicitly prohibits the federal government from creating incentives to set national standards. The law represents a major departure from recent federal initiatives, such as Race to the Top, which beginning in 2009 encouraged the adoption of uniform content standards and expectations for performance.

This paper provides direct evidence about the impacts of school job matching on productivity and student achievement.

The authors study the effects of various types of education and training on the ability of teachers to promote student achievement.

 This book provides a complete guide to implementing a wide range of problem-solving assessment methods: functional behavioral assessment, interviews, classroom observations, curriculum-based measurement, rating scales, and cognitive instruments.

this report aims to provide the public, along with teachers and leaders in the Great City Schools, with objective evidence about the extent of standardized testing in public schools and how these assessments are used.

Testing in the nation's schools is among the most debated issues in public education today.
Much of this discussion has centered on how much we are testing students and how we use
test results to evaluate teachers, inform instructional practice, and hold schools and
educators accountable.

This paper summarizes recent evidence on what achievement tests measure; how achievement tests relate to other measures of "cognitive ability" like IQ and grades; the important skills that achievement tests miss or mismeasure, and how much these skills matter in life.

The report considers the appropriate uses and misuses of high stakes tests in making decisions for students.  The fundamental question is whether test scores lead to consequences that are educationally beneficial.

This meta-analysis examines issues of reliability and validity of SAT tests and student grades on student performance in college.

The purpose of this study is to compare different statistical and methodological approaches to standard setting and determining cut scores using R- CBM and performance on high-stakes tests

A meta-analysis on the relationship between the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and corresponding explicit self-report measures was conducted.

The School-Wide Evaluation Tool (SET; Sugai, Lewis-Palmer, Todd, & Horner, 2001) was created to provide a rigorous measure of primary prevention practices within school-wide behavior support. In this article, the authors describe the SET and document its psychometric characteristics. 

In the last 20 years, international surveys assessing learning in reading, mathematics and science have been headline news because they put countries in rank order according to performance. The three most well known surveys are TIMSS, PISA and PIRLS. The survey offer information about international performances for the use of others in order to drive up education standards everywhere. They also emphasise that their aim is to facilitate dissemination of ideas on which features of education systems lead to the best performances.

This study evaluated the effects of high stakes testing on the achievement levels of students in Chicago Public Schools.  The data suggests that even though scores went up on the high stakes tests scores on “low stakes” achievement tests did not improve.  This suggests increases in scores was a function increases in test-specific skills rather than a general improvement in student learning.  These findings give credence to the “teaching to the test” criticisms.

This article show evidence of ACT scores drop on 2016. ACT officials attribute the drop to the increasing percentage of high school seniors who have taken the test. Generally, when a larger share of students take a test - in some cases encouraged by state requirements more than the students necessarily being college ready - scores go down.

The authors highlight an under-appreciated weakness of that approach-he imprecision of school-level test score means -- and propose a method for a better discerning signal from noise in annual school report cards. 

In recent years, most states have constructed elaborate accountability systems using school-level test scores. We evaluate the implications for school accountability systems. For instance, rewards or sanctions for schools with scores at either extreme primarily affect small schools and provide weak incentives to large ones.

This report presents an in-depth discussion of the analytical methods and findings from the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project’s analysis of classroom observations.1 A nontechnical companion report describes implications for policymakers and practitioners.

The Kansas State Board of Education's Quality Performance Accreditation system is described. Unlike past accreditation methods, which focused on the facilities or institutional characteristics, Quality Performance Accreditation accredits schools based on student performance. 

This article discusses key issues in identifying evidence-based treatments for children and adolescents. Among the issues discussed are obstacles in transporting treatments from research to clinical services, the weak criteria for delineating whether a treatment is evidence based, and barriers to training therapists.

The accidental education benefits of Covid-19.

For decades we’ve been studying, experimenting with, and wrangling over different approaches to improving public education, and there’s still little consensus on what works, and what to do. The one thing people seem to agree on, however, is that schools need to be held accountable—we need to know whether what they’re doing is actually working.

This study evaluated the generalization from high stakes tests to other mesures of achievement.  The results suggest that there is little generalization suggesting that improvement in high stakes test scores are the result of emphasis placed on the tests and time spent in test preparation rather than actual increase in student learning.

The research reported here investigated the effects of Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) by surveying teachers and principals in two of the three grades in which MSPAP is administered. 

In recent years, states have sought to increase accountability for public school teachers by implementing a package of reforms centered on high-stakes evaluation systems. We examine the effect of these reforms on the supply and quality of new teachers.

An up-to-date, practical, reader-friendly resource that will help readers navigate today's seemingly ever-changing and complex world of educational testing, assessment, and measurement. The 11th edition presents a balanced perspective of educational testing and assessment, informed by developments and the ever increasing research base.

By using data collected for the National Longitudinal Evaluation of Comprehensive School Reform (NLECSR), this article explores the factors that predict CSR model implementation and the ways that CSR model implementation varies.

We did not ask the panel to weigh in on debates over the role of state exams and accountability systems during a pandemic. However, the panel did discuss how districts and states can balance the goal of informing teachers and parents about individual students with the continued need to track system and school progress. The challenges in the upcoming school year will shine a harsh light on the variation in skills, knowledge, and needs that were always present.

The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of teacher evaluation scores that are derived from an observation tool, adapted from Danielson's Framework for Teaching, designed to assess 22 teaching components from four teaching domains.

what does it mean to take a scientific approach to instructional productivity? This chapter hopes to contribute to that discussion by examining the role scientific assessment can play in enhancing educational productivity.

In undertaking this study, two goals were established: (1) to obtain a better understanding of how much time students spend taking tests; and (2) to identify the degree to which the tests are mandated by districts or states. 

This study examines the relationship between two dominant measures of teacher quality, teacher qualification and teacher effectiveness (measured by value-added modeling), in terms of their influence on students’ short-term academic growth and long-term educational success (measured by bachelor’s degree attainment).

During the past two decades, performance-based accountability systems (PBASs), which link financial or other incentives to measured performance as a means of improving services, have gained popularity among policymakers

This paper explore the power of behavioral economics to influence the level of effort exerted by students in a low stakes testing environment. This paper find a substantial impact on test scores from incentives when the rewards are delivered immediately. There is suggestive evidence that rewards framed as losses outperform those framed as gains. 

Using a randomized control trial in 11 Chinese primary schools, we studied the effects of pay-for-grades programs on academic cheating. We randomly assigned 82 classrooms into treatment or control conditions, and used a statistical algorithm to determine the occurrence of cheating. 

The College board was recently released SAT scores for the high school graduating class of 2015. Both math and reading scores declined from 2014, continuing a steady downward trend that has been in place for the past decade. Pundits of contrasting political stripes seized on the scores to bolster their political agendas. Petrilli argued that falling SAT scores show that high schools needs more reform. For Burris, the declining scores were evidence of the failure of policies her organization opposes. This articles pointing out that SAT was never meant to measure national achievement and provide detail explanation. 

This Brown Center Report (BCR) on American Education is the sixth and final edition in the third volume and the 16th issue overall. The series began in 2000. As in the past, the report comprises three studies. Also in keeping with tradition, the first section features recent results from state, national, or international assessments; the second section investigates a thematic topic in education, either by collecting new data or by analyzing existing empirical evidence in a novel way; and the third section looks at one or more education policies.

The long term trend test of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (LTT NAEP) is the longest running test of student achievement that provides a scientifically valid estimate of what American students have learned. 

This paper is an examination of the impact of high stakes testing on minority students.  The outcomes suggest that high stakes testing does not have a positive impact on minority students and in some instances there is negative effects from high stakes testing.

This study presents such an approach where the impact of regular and special education on 11 mildly handicapped children is studied by analyzing their slope of improvement on weekly curriculum-based measures (CBM) reading scores.

there exists a serious need to examine alternative testing models for making educational decisions. in this chapter, this need is documented from the perspective that the traditional model has failed education in two major ways, from the technical level and from a social policy level. curriculum-based measurement procedures are proposed to redress some of the issues in these domains

In a series of two studies, the relative sensitivity of traditional standardized achievement tests and alternative curriculum-based measures was assessed. 

School closings and the ever-increasing number of deaths provide the backdrop for a proposal by the Center for American Progress (CAP) to deny waivers of the federally mandated administration of standardized tests in spring 2021. Further, the federal government proposes to add to those assessments in ways that CAP argues would make the test results more useful.

This study examines the relationship between scores on the SAT and retention to second year of college using student level data from the freshman class of 2006 at 106 four-year institutions.

The Common Core. Just last year, according to a Gallup poll, most Americans had never heard of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, or "Common Core," new guidelines for what kids in grades K–12 should be able to accomplish in reading, writing, and math. Designed to raise student proficiencies so the United States can better compete in a global market, the standards were drafted in 2009 by a group of academics and assessment specialists at the request of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

This note provides a brief review of work to address the challenges of measuring output and productivity in the education sector, with attention also to issues related to the increasing use of technology in the provision of education services.

This study investigated communicative strategies for helping female students cope with ‘‘stereotype threat’’. The results demonstrate that priming a positive achieved identity (e.g., private college student) can subdue stereotype threat associated with an ascribed identity (e.g., female).

Assessment, or testing, fulfills a vital role in today’s educational environment. Assessment results often are a major force in shaping public perceptions about the capabilities of our students and the quality of our schools. As a primary tool for educators and policymakers, assessment is used for many important purposes.

Assessments used in Missouri are designed to measure how well students acquire the skills and knowledge described in Missouri’s Learning Standards (MLS). The assessments yield information on academic achievement at the student, class, school, district and state levels.

The goal of this guide is to provide useful information about standardized testing, or assessment, for practitioners and non-practitioners who care about public schools. It includes the nature of assessment, types of assessments and tests, and definitions.

The Classroom Environment Scale (CES) helps create a positive school climate in which more students succeed. The instrument evaluates the effects of course content, teaching methods, teacher personality, class composition and characteristics of the overall classroom environment.

This study examines validity data for SAT scores and student grades enrolling classes of 1976 to 1985.

This article describe about the drop down of SAT score in 2016. 

The measurement unit disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), used in recent years to quantify the burden of diseases, injuries and risk factors on human populations, is grounded on cogent economic and ethical principles and can guide policies toward delivering more cost-effective and equitable health care. 

How did U.S. students perform on the most recent assessments? Select a jurisdiction and a result to see how students performed on the latest NAEP assessments.

How did U.S students perform on ht most recent assessment? 

This non-technical brochure provides introductory information on the development, administration, scoring, and reporting of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The brochure also provides information about the online resources available on the NAEP website.

Twelfth-graders’ performance in reading and mathematics improves since 2005. Nationally representative samples of twelfth-graders from 1,670 public and private schools across the nation participated in the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

The Data Explorer for the Long-Term Trend assessments provides national mathematics and reading results dating from the 1970s.

Nationally representative samples of 209,000 fourth-graders and 175,200 eighth-graders participated in the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in mathematics.

Percentages of students meeting state proficiency standards and performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level, by subject, grade, and state: 2009

In this new national writing assessment sample, 24,100 eighth-graders and 28,100 twelfthgraders engaged with writing tasks and composed their responses on computer. The assessment tasks reflected writing situations common to both academic and workplace settings and asked students to write for several purposes and communicate to different audiences.

This book looks at how testing affects critical decisions for American students. The text focuses on how testing is used in schools to make decisions about tracking and placement, promotion and retention, and awarding or withholding high school diplomas. This book examines the controversies that emerge when a test score can open or close gates on a student's educational pathway.

The paper examines Campbell’s law-the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision making the more likely the measure will corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”  In education, high stakes testing has resulted in widespread cheating, exclusion from low performing students from testing, encouraging students to drop out,  and narrowing the curriculum.

This study evaluated the relationship between increased accountability via high stakes testing and progress on other measures of educational progress.  The results suggests that high stakes testing does not have any positive impact on student achievement.

School reformers and state and federal policymakers turned to standardized testing over the years to get a clearer sense of the return on a national investment in public education that reached $680 billion in 2018-19. They embraced testing to spur school improvement and to ensure the educational needs of traditionally underserved students were being met.

This volume of PISA 2009 results looks at the progress countries have made in raising student performance and improving equity in the distribution of learning opportunities. 

The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys, which take place every three years, have been designed to collect information about 15-year-old students in participating countries.

Student engagement at school and whether students feel hopeful about their future are far better factors to consider when evaluating schools than using standardized test scores, according to the results of the 47th annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools.

The education reform movement of the past two decades has focused on raising academic
standards. Some standards advocates attach a testing mechanism to gauge the extent to
which high standards are actually accomplished, whereas some critics accuse the push for
standards and testing of impeding reform and perpetuating inequality.

The Standardized Testing Primer provides non-specialists with a thorough overview of this
controversial and complicated topic. It eschews the statistical details of scaling, scoring, and
measurement that are widely available in textbooks and at testing organization Web sites,
and instead describes standardized testing's social and political roles and its practical uses-
who tests, when, where, and why.

American teachers are feeling enormous pressure these days to raise their students' scores
on high-stakes tests. As a consequence, some teachers are providing classroom instruction
that incorporates, as practice activities, the actual items on the high-stakes tests.

Donald Campbell was an American social psychologist and noted experimental social science researcher who did pioneering work on methodology and program evaluation. He has also become—posthumously—an unlikely hero of the anti-testing and accountability movement in the United States.

Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch was once an early advocate of No Child Left Behind, school vouchers and charter schools. No Child Left Behind required schools to administer yearly state standardized tests. Student progress on those tests was measured to see if the schools met their Adequate Yearly Progress goals. or AYP. Schools missing those goals for several years in a row could be restructured, replaced or shut down.

The authors estimate racial/ethnic achievement gaps in several hundred metropolitan areas and several thousand school districts in the United States using the results of roughly 200 million standardized math and English language arts (ELA) tests administered to public school students from 2009 to 2013. They show that the strongest correlates of achievement gaps are local racial/ethnic differences in parental income and educational attainment, local average parental education levels, and patterns of racial/ethnic segregation, consistent with a theoretical model in which family socioeconomic factors affect educational opportunity partly through residential and school segregation patterns.

In this paper, we analyze racial differences in the math section of the general SAT test, using publicly available College Board population data for all of the nearly 1.7 million college-bound seniors in 2015 who took the SAT. The evidence for a stubborn race gap on this test does meanwhile provide a snapshot into the extraordinary magnitude of racial inequality in contemporary American society. Standardized tests are often seen as mechanisms for meritocracy, ensuring fairness in terms of access. But test scores reflect accumulated advantages and disadvantages in each day of life up the one on which the test is taken. Race gaps on the SAT hold up a mirror to racial inequities in society as a whole. Equalizing educational opportunities and human capital acquisition earlier is the only way to ensure fairer outcomes.

This article show the evidence for a race gap on the SAT math score and some big issues at stake including: the value of the SAT itself; the case for broader policies to take into account socioeconomic background in college admissions; the obsession with four-year college degrees; and the danger of college as a “bottleneck” in the American opportunity structure. 

This review examined the overlap between state-created curriculum evaluation tools and The Hexagon Tool created by the National Implementation Research Network. The author followed systematic procedures while conducting a web search and visiting each state’s department of education website in search of curriculum evaluation tools.

Amrein and Berliner (2002b) compared National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results in high-stakes states against the national average for NAEP scores. In this analysis, a comparison group was formed from states that did not attach consequences to their state-wide tests.

This research considers relationships between student achievement (knowledge and cognitive skill), teacher efficacy (Gibson & Dembo, 1984), and interactions with assigned coaches (self-report measures) in a sample of 18 grade 7 and 8 history teachers in 36 classes implementing a specific innovation with the help of 6 coaches.

CHILDREN take one of two types of standardized test, one ''norm-referenced,'' the other ''criteria-referenced.'' Although those names have an arcane ring, most parents are familiar with how the exams differ.

This table allows you to compare a student’s SAT® scores with the performance of other 2012 college-bound seniors who took the test some time in high school. Please keep in mind that relationships between test scores and other factors are complex and interdependent. Other factors do not directly affect test performance; rather, they are associated with educational experiences both on tests and in schoolwork.

Is it time to kill annual testing? An Education Week article.

Part of the president Bush strategy for the transformation of "American Schools" lies in an accountability system that would track progress toward the nation's education goals as well as provide the impetus for reform. Here we focus primarily on issues of accountability and student achievement. 

In today's political climate, standardized tests are inadequate and misleading as achievement measures. Educators should employ a variety of measures, improve standardized test content and format, and remove incentives for teaching to the test. Focusing on raising test scores distorts instruction and renders scores less credible. Includes 13 references.

Curriculum-Based Measurement and Special Services for Children is a concise and convenient guide to CBM that demonstrates why it is a valuable assessment procedure, and how it can be effectively utilized by school professionals.

Developed specifically to overcome problems with traditional standardized instruments--and widely used in both general and special education settings throughout the US--curriculum-based measurement (CBM) comprises brief assessment probes of reading, spelling, written expression, and mathematics that serve both to quantify student performance and to bolster academic achievement.

n the before-times, one of the hallmarks of spring for parents, students and teachers was the ramp-up toward federally mandated standardized tests. COVID-19 had something to say about that last school year, and in mid-March, the U.S. Department of Education granted states a blanket exemption from standardized testing.

Introduces a new analytic strategy for comparing the cognitive profiles of children developing reading skills at different rates: a regression-based logic analogous to the reading-level match design, but without some of the methodological problems of that design.

Effective ongoing assessment, referred to in the education literature as formative assessment or progress monitoring, is indispensable in promoting teacher and student success. Feedback through formative assessment is ranked at or near the top of practices known to significantly raise student achievement. For decades, formative assessment has been found to be effective in clinical settings and, more important, in typical classroom settings. Formative assessment produces substantial results at a cost significantly below that of other popular school reform initiatives such as smaller class size, charter schools, accountability, and school vouchers. It also serves as a practical diagnostic tool available to all teachers. A core component of formal and informal assessment procedures, formative assessment allows teachers to quickly determine if individual students are progressing at acceptable rates and provides insight into where and how to modify and adapt lessons, with the goal of making sure that students do not fall behind.

Summative assessment is an appraisal of learning at the end of an instructional unit or at a specific point in time. It compares student knowledge or skills against standards or benchmarks. Summative assessment includes midterm exams, final project, papers, teacher-designed tests, standardized tests, and high-stakes tests. 

This investigation contributed to previous research by separating the effects of simply making instructional changes, not based on student performance data, from the effects of making instructional changes in accordance with CBM data.

The purpose of this document is to provide background information that will be useful in interpreting the 2007 results from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) by comparing its design, features, framework, and items with those of the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress and another international assessment in which the United States participates, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The report found, because there are differences in the features, frameworks and items of the national and international assessments, direct comparisons among the assessments are not useful. Rather the results from different studies should be thought of as different lenses through which to view and better understand U.S. student performance.

This document provide background information that will be useful in interpreting the results from two key international assessments that are being released in November and December 2007 and in comparing these results with recent findings from the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress in similar subjects. In sum, there appears to be an advantage in capitalizing on the complementary information presented in national and international assessments. NAEP measures in detail the reading, mathematics and science knowledge of U.S. students as a whole, and can also provide trend information for individual states, different geographic regions, and demographic population groups. International assessments like PIRLS and PISA add value by providing a method for comparing our performance in the United States to the performance of students in other nations. However, their differences need to be recognized when interpreting results. 

The classroom assessment procedures o f 36 teachers in grades 2 to 12 were studied in depth to determine the extent to which they measure students” higher order thinking skills in mathematics, science, social studies, and language arts. 

America has been obsessed with student standardized tests for nearly 20 years. Now it looks like the country is at the beginning of the end of our high-stakes testing mania — both for K-12 “accountability” purposes and in college admissions.

There are growing calls from across the political spectrum for the federal government to allow states to skip giving students federally mandated standardized tests in spring 2021 — but the man that President-elect Joe Biden tapped to be education secretary has indicated support for giving them.

What you need to know about standardized testing.

A meta-analysis involving 46 studies addressing the validity of this classification of poor readers revealed substantial overlap between the IQ-discrepant and IQ-consistent poor readers

This paper examines the use of high stakes testing such as end of course exams in American education.  The conclusions are that the exams do not produce substantive changes in instructional practices and the information is useful to measure school and system progress but has limited utility for instructional guidance.

Test-based accountability systems — the use of tests to hold individuals or institutions responsible for performance and to reward achievement — have become the cornerstone of U.S. federal education policy, and the past decade has witnessed a widespread adoption of test-based accountability systems in the U.S. Consider just one material manifestation of this burgeoning trend: test sales have grown from from approximately $260 million annually in 1997 to approximately $700 million today — nearly a threefold increase.

The federal role in developing the teacher workforce has increased markedly in the last
decade, but the history of such involvement dates back fifty years. Relying initially on
policies to recruit and train teachers, the federal role has expanded in recent years to
include new policy initiatives and instruments around the themes of accountability,
incentives, and qualifications, while also continuing the historic emphasis on teacher
recruitment, preparation, and development.

The continuing COVID-19 pandemic has forced school districts across the nation to quickly adapt their approach to teaching and learning, with widespread variation in the response. With a new school year now underway, several states require that schools provide some degree of in-person instruction, while other states have left such decisions up to local education and public health officials.

The study design was a declarative exposition of potential fallacies in the theoretical underpinnings of Cost-Effective Analysis (CFA).

This article show different approach that researcher took to answer questions on social gradient in education between the countries. Comparing some of these results highlights weak service delivery in many developing countries. Even where resources may be similar, social gradients are steep in some, indicating much worse educational outcomes for the poor. And public resources are often extremely poorly converted into learning. The differential ability of schools and school systems to convert resources into learning outcomes remains a major impediment to improving educational outcomes, and indeed life chances, for the poor.

Data from the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress are used to compare the performance of New Jersey public school children with those from other participating states. The comparisons are made with the raw means scores and after standardizing all state scores to a common (National U.S.) demographic mixture. It is argued that for most plausible questions about the performance of public schools the standardized scores are more useful.

This report describes the first of a series of researches that will attempt to characterize the performance of New Jersey's public school system.

The use of educational data to make decisions and foster improvement is increasing dramatically. Federal and state accountability mandates have created a strong market for formal achievement testing, both in terms of state achievement tests and benchmarking assessments that help predict performance on these tests.

This investigation focused on the effects of two independent variables; (a) teacher-developed goals and monitoring systems versus a curriculum-based measurement (CBM) goal and monitoring system; and (b) individual expert versus group follow-up consultation. 

This article will describe a CBM which is very efficient and provides the teacher with adequate information for grouping and monitoring progress throughout the school year. 

This paper presents four studies that examine the time required to implement direct and frequent curriculum-based measurement (CBM) as well as strategies to improve the efficiency of CBM. Ten rural special education resource teachers were the subjects.

In this book, Grant P. Wiggins clarifies the limits of testing in an assessment system. Beginning with the premise that student assessment should improve performance, not just audit it, Wiggins analyzes some time-honored but morally and intellectually problematic practices in test design, such as the use of secrecy, distracters, scoring on a curve, and formats that allow for no explanation by students of their answers.

This paper conducts an analytic literature review to examine the use and operationalization of the term in multiple academic fields

This study investigates the prediction of college success as defined by a student’s college GPA. We predict college GPA mid-way through and at the end of their college careers using high school GPA (HSGPA), college entrance exam scores (SAT/ACT) and an open-ended, performance-based assessment of critical thinking and writing skills (CLA). 3,137 college sophomores and 1,330 college seniors participated in this study.

In this study, the reliability of the MAS was reexamined with two independent groups of developmentally disabled individuals who exhibited SIB (N = 55).

The number of students taking Advanced Placement (AP) tests has grown to more than 2.5 million students annually. Overall test scores have remained relatively constant despite a 60% increase in the number of students taking AP exams since 2006. In school year 2015–16, 20% of students taking an AP test passed and were eligible for college credit. The College Board also reports a continuing trend in the significant increase in the number of low-income students participating in the program. Unfortunately, this trend may be negatively impacted by changes in funding. The federal grant program subsidizing AP tests for low-income students has been replaced by block grants in the Every Student Succeeds Act. These funds may still be applied to subsidize low-income populations but are not mandated for this purpose as in the past.