Fifty years ago, Robert Glaser introduced the concept of criterion-referenced measurement in an article in American Psychologist. Its early proponents predicted that this measurement strategy would revolutionize education. But has it lived up to its promise? W. James Popham explores this question by looking at the history of criterion-referenced…

In the last few years, all but a few U.S. states have rushed to enact tougher teacher evaluation systems. Spurred by the incentives offered by two federal education initiatives--Race to the Top and the ESEA Flexibility Program--these states have designed teacher evaluation systems designed to "remove ineffective tenured and untenured…

Student affect--the attitudes, interests, and values that students exhibit and acquire in school--can play a profoundly important role in students' postschool lives, possibly an even more significant role than that played by students' cognitive achievements. If student affect is so crucial, then why don't teachers assess it? One deterrent is that…

Scads of pseudodiagnostic tests are peddled by commercial vendors who recognize that desperate educators will do almost anything to dodge an impending accountability cataclysm. And this "almost anything" includes buying tests that promise to help a teacher raise test scores--even if they don't. Accordingly, today's educators need to be aware of…

Despite repeated calls for educators to get more instructional mileage out of the assessment data they have at hand, two deterrents typically stand in the way of most educators' effective use of test data. First, there's a missing "realization", and second, there's a missing "skill". Educators who possess both this realization and this skill will…

If a person were to ask an educator to identify the two most important attributes of an education test, the response most certainly would be "validity and reliability." These two tightly wedded concepts have become icons in the field of education assessment. As far as validity is concerned, the term doesn't refer to the accuracy of a test. Rather,…

Assessment for learning involves the frequent, continual use of both formal and informal classroom assessments. It can be as simple as requiring students to respond to a lesson-embedded, one-item quiz as a way of gauging student understanding of what is being taught. Ideally, this innovative approach to classroom assessment is based on a careful…

Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and American College Program (ACT) scores are the main determinants of college entrance in the USA. It is widely assumed that these tests are predictive of success both during college and in later life, but such views are incorrect. Another widely-held view, held by many educators, is that the SAT and ACT are…

In this article, the author explains the key differences among three kinds of instructionally relevant tests that can have a huge impact on what goes on in classrooms: "instructionally insensitive tests," "instructionally sensitive tests," and "instructionally informative tests." If educators understand the advantages and limitations of these…

What people mean when they use the phrase "content standard" varies all over the lot. In some states, content standards are little more than category labels describing collections of curricular aims in particular content areas. If a state's content standards are too numerous, then teachers do not know where to aim their instructional efforts. This…

Students' attitudes, interests, and values are enormously important to educators because affective dispositions are powerful predictors of students' subsequent behavior. A remarkably important way to judge schools can be gained by collecting evidence of important affective changes in groups of students over time.

A non-cushioned adequate yearly progress (AYP) sledgehammer will start pounding many schools from the beginning of 2005. The AYP-failed schools that receive Title 1 No Child Behind Policy (NCLB) funds will be placed on a sanction-laden improvement track than can improve a school all the way into nonexistence.

The societal role of education accountability programs is mainly to see that schools and teachers provide excellent instruction to help kids learn better. The school's educators should collectively determine what kinds of credible evidence, other than No Child Left Behind (NCLB) test scores, could help provide an accurate and honest picture of…

Results of tests of students' skills and knowledge conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the state accountability tests required by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program should not be compared. The two tests are based on different standards and have different measurement functions and judging the results of one…

The US people are becoming less concerned with what's good for children and more concerned about compliance with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy. The NCLB is constricting the curricular thinking of education leaders rather than spurring instructional improvements.