Assessment: Are assessments that rely heavily on teacher judgment reliable? - Access related research titles from the ECS Research Studies Database. Links embedded in titles will take you to each study's major findings and recommendations....

States Prepare for Common Core Assessments: Year 3 of Implementing the Common Core - Most states have taken steps to start assessing students' Common Core State Standards (CCSS) knowledge or will do so before the assessments developed by the two consortia, Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium are ready in school year 2014-15, according to a recent survey. Forty states responded to the survey. Half have begun to prepare teachers to use assessment results and half are working with schools and districts to plan for extra assistance for students who need help passing CCSS exams. Only eight are considering suspending consequences for schools or individuals based on CCSS performance. (Diane Stark Rentner, Center on Education Policy, August 2013) (Diane Stark Rentner, Center on Education Policy, August 2013)...

K-12 Education: States' Test Security Policies and Procedures Varied - A briefing for U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan reveals that 40 states detected potential cheating during the past two school years and 33 confirmed at least one instance of cheating. Thirty-two states reported canceling, invalidating, or nullifying test scores from individual students, schools or districts because of suspected or confirmed instances of cheating by school officials. Also, 22 states reported they had all leading practices for security training in place, but four had none. (GAO, May 2013)...

Getting to Higher-Quality Assessments: Evaluating Costs, Benefits, and Investment Strategies - To compare the cost of assessments under No Child Left Behind with new assessments in the era of Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the Assessments Solutions Group researched various states' current spending on summative, interim, and formative assessments. They conclude the CCSS assessments will be higher quality, and "readily affordable." (Barry Topol, John Olson and Ed Roeber, SCOPE, March 2013)...

Developing Assessments of Deeper Learning: The Costs and Benefits of Using Tests that Help Students Learn - With Common Core State Standards comes a demand for higher-order thinking skills and a second demand for assessments that measure those skills. Two consortia - the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC)- have been working on those advanced assessments and the authors recommend drawing on their work. But how to pay for these advanced tests and their scoring? States now spend, on average, $50 per pupil for statewide, interim and benchmark tests which still total less than 1% of per pupil spending. That would just about do it if state consortia took advantage of economies of scale, and teachers and computers scored open-ended tasks, which, the authors say, would have the double advantage of resulting in improved instruction. (Linda Darling-Hammond and Frank Adamson, Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, March 15, 2013)...

The State of Proficiency: How Student Proficiency Rates Vary Across States, Subjects and Grades Between 2002 and 2010 - The purpose of this study is to shine some light on the limitations of using proficiency rates based on inconsistent and arbitrary "passing scores" to make judgments about educational effectiveness. (Sarah Durant, Michael Dahlin, Deborah Adkins and G. Gage Kingsbury, Kingbury Center at Northwest Evaluation Association, June 2011)...

The Road Ahead for State Assessments - A blueprint for strengthening assessment policy, pointing out how new technologies are opening up new possibilities for fairer, more accurate evaluations of what students know and are able to do. Not all of the promises can yet be delivered, but the report provides a clear set of assessment-policy recommendations. (Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy, May 2011) ...

Learning About Assessment: An Evaluation of a Ten-State Effort to Build Assessment Capacity in High Schools - In 2006, Delaware and the Council of Chief State School Officers partnered with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education to conduct an evaluation of a 10-state initiative that sought to enhance assessment practices at the high school level. (Consortium for Policy Research in Education, February 2009)...

Measuring Skills for the 21st Century - Best learning occurs when basic skills are taught in combination with complex thinking skills, for example, the ability to think creatively and to evaluate and analyze information. Assessment should measure both without adding to the number of tests students must take. This report debunks the notion that such 21st century skills as creative thinking and analysis cannot be reliably, inexpensively and fairly measured, offering examples of tests already devised and predicting more are on the way. (Elena Silva, Education Sector, November 2008)...