Student engagement during testing in the full range of writing process activities they had been taught was studied. Results with 28 third-grade draft sets, 21 fifth-grade sets, and 38 eighth-grade sets on the Maryland School Performance Assessment writing test show that students' peer responses are unengaged, minimal, and formulaic, and that their…

Findings from a study of diverse assessment practices in a fifth-grade classroom were used to develop a framework for describing assessment system practices. The framework is used to compare different assessment activities, and new criteria for designing systemically valid assessments to support and extend classroom practices are proposed. (SLD)

In this phenomenological study, seven veteran elementary school teachers explored how they were able to make accurate and timely decisions about their students' mathematical understanding. Patterns of recognizable phenomena were recognized that teachers implicitly perceived and interpreted as indicators of children's understanding. (SLD)

Current discussions of the effects of test administration conditions (i.e., testing stakes) and the motivational levels associated with them on achievement test performance are reviewed. Results of a nonexperimental study suggest that, in contrast to a moderate-stakes testing environment, the National Assessment of Educational Progress does not…