Thoughtfully constructed standards provide valuable direction for curriculum and instruction. But to bring about significant improvement in education, standards must be linked to students' learning experiences and to classroom assessments. The author describes the table of specifications, a planning tool for analyze standards for instruction and…

Research has established that formative assessment is more likely to produce significant learning gains if students can answer three questions: Where am I going? Where am I now? and How can I close the gap? She offers seven strategies that teachers can use to involve students in the assessment process and ensure that students are the primary users…

David Niguidula, an education consultant who helped research the effectiveness of digital portfolios as an assessment tool in the mid-1990s, discusses core questions for schools planning to use digital portfolios. Schools must take time to identify the purpose of portfolios, plan what will go into portfolios, and decide how to assess portfolio…

Many schools are moving to develop benchmark tests to monitor their students' progress toward state standards throughout the academic year. Benchmark tests can provide the ongoing information that schools need to guide instructional programs and to address student learning problems. The authors discuss six criteria that educators can use to…

When an Idaho school district initiated computerized adaptive testing, it discovered that all the growth occurring in the district was limited to the lowest-achieving students. The more proficient students, which included both gifted and above-average learners, showed little or no growth. The assessment data showed a weak curriculum that tended to…

High school teacher and instructional coach Tony Winger laments how traditional classroom grading practices lead to grades becoming a distraction from learning--a commodity students feel they work the system to attain--rather than a clear message to students and parents. Teachers' passion for their subjects is too often met with students'…

Formative assessment and instructional scaffolding are essentially the same thing. Formative assessment uses insights about a learner's current understandings to alter the course of instruction and thus support the development of greater competence. Scaffolding refers to supports that teachers provide the learner during problem solving--in the…

McNamee and Chen describe the Bridging assessment system they developed to measure performance on specific learning tasks for pre-K through 3rd-grade students. Bridging assesses an individual student's skill level on learning tasks in five curricular areas: language arts and literacy, visual arts, mathematics, science, and performing arts. The…

Because today's students have grown up steeped in video games and the Internet, most of them expect feedback, and usually gratification, very soon after they expend effort on a task. Teachers can get quick feedback to students by showing them videotapes of their learning performances. The author, a 3rd grade teacher describes how the seemingly…

A high school math teacher describes how U.S. schools unwittingly erode student learning by using assessments to emphasize the wrong goals. He claims that students have begun to see school as a "game" in which collecting the most points--seen as "capital" or wealth--leads them to success. Instead, he argues, assessment should mean being keenly…

In this article, the author draws attention to the fact that in school evaluations, students will improve on state-mandated tests, but the improved scores will not influence a school's adequate yearly progress (AYP) status because those students' scores do not cross the proficiency point. A state's proficiency point on each of its standardized…

In recent years, assessment data have assumed a more central role education policy and practice. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requires states to implement standardized assessment-based systems to evaluate their schools. The NCLB approach rests on the assumption that assessment data can provide credible information to gauge how effectively schools…

When Joanne Rooney, a principal, asked 17 tenured teachers who were due for their formal supervisory visits at Pleasant Hill School in Palatine, Illinois whether her annual visits and follow-up conferences help them become better teachers," her question was met with muffled laughter. They knew that her rushed, mandatory visits and conferences…

According to a new report by Linda Darling-Hammond and colleagues at Stanford University's School Redesign Network, state laws requiring students to pass an exit examination to obtain their high school diploma can harm students and schools. Evidence suggests that inflexible exit exam policies can reduce graduation rates (especially among minority…

This article describes the experiences of school personnel working with undocumented immigrants in public schools and the opinions and attitudes of school personnel. The resulting propositions are: (1) Undocumented students and their parents live with a great deal of psychological stress on a daily basis; (2) Undocumented students face multiple…