What You Need to Know About California's High Stakes Tests
What are ‘high stakes’ tests? These are tests mandated by law whose scores are used as the basis for distributing rewards and punish-ments to students, teachers, schools, and school administrators. What happens to students who fail tests? Students cannot be legally denied promotion based solely on STAR/ SAT9 (or its replacement). Standardized test scores, however, […]
Identifying Successful Schools for Low Income and Minority Group Students
Status: Archived Subject: K-12 Testing FairTest Examiner – January 2008 Most research that looks at successful schools or tracks improvement in education uses standardized test scores as the sole criterion for measuring progress. Such research may produce strong evidence about the practices and policies that raise test scores, but it provides little useful information about […]
Performance Assessments Succeed in New York
Status: Archived Subject: K-12 Testing FairTest Examiner, October 2012 Performance-based assessment works well for the types of students that test-driven “reforms” are supposed to benefit but so often fail, according to a report from the New York Performance Standards Consortium. The Consortium’s assessments are created by teachers and rooted in project-based curricula, teaching and learning. […]
Computerized Testing Problems – Chronology
compiled by National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) The ongoing litany of computer exam administration failures reinforces the conclusion that the technologies rushed into the marketplace by political mandates and lobbying by the companies paid to implement them are not ready for prime time. It makes no sense to attach high-stakes consequences to […]
NCLB Backlash Casts Harsh Light on Bush Education Record
Status: Archived Subject: K-12 Testing In his weekly column, the New York Times’ Michael Winerip has written a disturbing series of articles that put a human face on the trauma and dislocation caused by No Child Left Behind. For example, New York City has allowed 8,000 students to transfer in an effort to comply with […]
NCLB Neither Spurs Improvement Nor Prevents Failure
Status: Archived Subject: K-12 Testing The federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law’s adequate yearly progress (AYP) mechanism provides little clear or useful information about school quality and appears to be neither encouraging school improvement nor preventing failure, according to a recent report from the Harvard Civil Rights Project (HCRP). Rather, it is heaping unhelpful […]
Performance Assessment Schools Meet High Standards Without High-Stakes Regents Tests. That's the Truth! What are the Myths?
MYTH 1: If some schools administer performance assessments instead of Regents exams, all schools will want to use the same “escape hatch.” TRUTH: Rather than being an “escape hatch,” performance assessment tasks, as used by the New York Performance Standards Consortium, are more challenging than Regents exams. In fact, tasks such as the literary essay, […]
Refocusing Accountability
(note – a print formated pdf of this document can be downloaded via the attachment at the bottom of this page) Briefing Paper Prepared for Members of The Congress of The United States Refocusing Accountability: Using Local Performance Assessments to Enhance Teaching and Learning for Higher Order Skills George H. Wood Director, The Forum for […]
Refocusing Accountability: Using Local Performance Assessments to Enhance Teaching and Learning for Higher Order Skills
George H. Wood Director, The Forum for Education and Democracy Principal, Federal Hocking High School, Stewart, Ohio Linda Darling-Hammond Charles E. Ducommun Professor, Stanford University Co-Director, School Redesign Network Monty Neill Co-Director, Fair Test (National Center for Fair & Open Testing) Pat Roschewski Director of Statewide Assessment Nebraska Department of Education May 16, 2007 For […]
From Virginia: Raise children, not test scores: How parents organized to reform the Virginia Standards of Learning exams
Education reform today is being increasingly defined as the imposition of “standards” from afar followed simultaneously by standardized multiple choice tests that carry consequences for failure to children, schools, teachers and communities. These tests are referred to as “high stakes” tests. As this “education reform” rises up in state after state, so also do networks […]