As educators confront the challenge of remediating COVID-19 learning loss--and policymakers wrestle with measuring it amid widespread discontent with testing--now is an apt time to consider how much of the current accountability and assessment regime is truly necessary. This report examines the state of testing post-March 2020 and explores how a…

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (Smarter Balanced) strives to provide every student with a positive and productive assessment experience, generating results that are a fair and accurate estimate of each student's achievement. Further, Smarter Balanced is building on a framework of accessibility for all students, including English…

This book explores how peer reviews are used in school improvement, accountability and education system reform. Importantly, these issues are studied through numerous international cases and new empirical evidence. This volume also identifies and describes barriers and facilitators to the development, use, sustainability and expansion of school…

Imagine Schools is a national family of 51 nonprofit public charter school campuses located in seven states and the District of Columbia. The schools serves approximately 29,000 students in K-12 classrooms. In the past few years, Imagine Schools began a move toward adopting a restorative mindset that emphasizes positive relationships and the…

This Data Point compares the sources of information in evaluating teacher performance and how the information is used by traditional public school and public charter school principals in the United States. It uses data from the public school principal questionnaire from the 2017-18 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS), a nationally…

The objective of this article is to explore the relationship between concepts relating to nature and production and, by extension, to work, personal prosperity, and Spain's economic growth, as portrayed in compulsory education textbooks between 1965 and 1990. To this end, in our investigation we scrutinize the evolution of the conception and…

Accountability mechanisms and processes have evolved with changes in statute. State Education Agency (SEA) accountability systems may exhibit characteristics of compliance- and/or improvement-focused systems in light of requirements under the "Elementary and Secondary Education Act" (ESEA) and its reauthorizations under the…

Coherence among components of an instructional system is key to changing teachers' instructional practices in standards-based reforms. Coherence involves working across traditional silos--or system components (e.g., curriculum, professional learning, assessment)--to integrate components to avoid fragmentation of experiences for educators and…

If K-12 students are to be fully integrated as active participants in their own learning, understanding how they interpret formative assessment feedback is needed. The objective of this article is to advance three claims about why teachers and assessment scholars/specialists may have little understanding of students' interpretation of formative…

The U.S. Department of Education (Education) plays a key role in supporting educational opportunities for K-12 students, including awarding grants and overseeing compliance with federal education laws. Over the past decade, Education's grant awards have generally increased in number and size. Using Education budget data, it was determined that in…

This is meant to support states who find they need additional flexibility beyond the three options listed in the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) February 2021 letter to state chiefs. This rationale accompanies the Assessment Flexibility Guidance (ED614803) posted by the Center for Assessment on March 9, 2021. State leaders should select and…

In this paper we report our development of instruments to measure Big Ideas in school mathematics. In tackling the issue of assessment fatigue among students, we present an aggregated approach to measure students' knowledge of Big Ideas.

Insights into the process of mathematical problem posing is a central concern in mathematics education research. However, little is known about regulative or metacognitive behaviors that are essential to understanding this process. In this study, we investigate metacognitive behavior in problem posing. We aim at (1) identifying…

Many technical, test design, and implementation questions are involved in designing new statewide assessments. These are all critical, shaping often underexamined aspects of testing: student test experience and families' perceptions of testing in this new structure. Although the state outreach to students and families is needed generally, it is…

This study explores the ways in which public schools are evaluated and the results are reported in North Carolina. Currently using a formula that calculates a summative score based on academic achievement and academic growth, the impact of poverty and the complexity of school evaluation is investigated using demographic and testing data from…