Search Results for: node/virginia Schools

School “Accountability” and the Illusion of Progress: Misusing MCAS To Assess School Quality By Anne Wheelock with the staff of FairTest The School and District Accountability System is the shining star of education reform in that it’s taking schools for what they are, where they’re starting off, and allowing them to show what they can […]

Ken Jones For some time now, it has been apparent to many in the educational community that state and federal policies intended to develop greater school accountability for the learning of all students have been terribly counter-productive. The use of high-stakes testing of students has been fraught with flawed assumptions, oversimplified understandings of school realities, […]

Ken Jones For some time now, it has been apparent to many in the educational community that state and federal policies intended to develop greater school accountability for the learning of all students have been terribly counter-productive. The use of high-stakes testing of students has been fraught with flawed assumptions, oversimplified understandings of school realities, […]

Terry CrooksEducational Assessment Research UnitUniversity of OtagoBox 56, Dunedin, New Zealand(Terry.Crooks@otago.ac.nz) Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, Illinois, 22 April 2003,within Session 36.011 – Accountability from an International Perspective. Some Criteria for Intelligent Accountability Because this is the first paper in this session, it is appropriate to begin […]

FairTest staff have studied the legislation (“No Child Left Behind Act”) and consulted with additional sources to prepare the following analysis of the testing and accountability provisions. The Act is very detailed and long, and we apologize for any errors in this summary and analysis. We will amend this document to correct any errors brought […]

Introduction: At its best, the idea of adequate yearly progress (AYP) is an effort to prod schools, districts and states to identify and solve two kinds of problems: schools in which most students perform well but some students do not, particularly low-income or minority-group students; and schools in which most students do not meet high […]

A Joint Organizational Statement on the Federal Role in Public Schooling Vision of Public Education All children deserve the opportunity to succeed in high quality public schools. High quality public schools are schools where students and adults form active communities of learners, evidenced by a culture that is both supportive and challenging. They attend to […]

A review by the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest) of the test score patterns of Massachusetts schools recently singled out for special recognition on the basis of gains in MCAS scores highlights a variety of ways in whichtest score gains are an unreliable means of assessingschool quality. A variety of factors can […]

Status: Archived Subject: K-12 Testing A major study from Chicago’s Designs for Change (DFC) offers significant implications for school improvement efforts and a powerful caution to the overemphasis on standardized testing and the use of NCLB-style sanctions. The Big Picture (http://www.designsforchange.org/) reports that 144 initially low-scoring Chicago K-8 schools made sustained gains on standardized test […]

The new federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) will put all schools whose students have not made “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) on state assessments into a “needs improvement” category and then if AYP is still not met enact a series of sanctions that can culminate in firing staff, state takeover, turning it over to […]