To address nationwide concerns about overtesting, Achieve developed the "Student Assessment Inventory for School Districts" (see ED603651) which can be used by education leaders to make decisions about the appropriate amount of testing and to be more transparent with parents about assessments in schools. Since its launch in 2014, the…

Across the country, education leaders are adding their voices to the call to address the issue of overtesting in schools. To assist districts in ensuring they have a coherent assessment strategy in place and only administer tests that are useful and of high quality, Achieve developed the "Student Assessment Inventory for School…

Teacher-evaluation has become a key measure for determining teacher effectiveness and the examination of the evaluation process at early childhood levels is a critical area of study. Responding to federal policies, many states have reformed their teacher evaluation systems. One of the more recent developments in state policy is the inclusion of…

The use of data to inform decisionmaking and practice at the school and district levels is now a common feature of reform efforts. Advances in districts' technological capacities have produced data systems that allow a flow of data to and from schools, often to the point of creating an overwhelming flood of information. To make the flow of…

Early childhood teachers are rightly concerned with implementing a system that was, at least in the initial stages, designed with a different set of teachers in mind--teachers of older students who have standardized achievement data. In most states, policy, practices, and guidance for early childhood teachers are just now being developed or…

The Illinois Three Phase System should be temporarily retained as an administrative tool to be used in relationships between the Division of Vocational and Technical Education and local education agencies. But it is clear that such a system, with its scope directed toward local school districts, with its lack of outcome assessment, and with its…

State policies to equalize educational spending, cap bond and levy rates, require common teacher salary schedules, and consolidate school districts are geared toward improving quality and attempting to resolve problems of inefficiency. However, despite the use of state policy to equalize educational quality, educational gaps persist. Yu and Lau…

"Assessing Expressive Learning" is the only book in the art education field to date to propose and support a research-supported teacher-directed authentic assessment model for evaluating K-12 studio art, and to offer practical information on how to implement the model. This practical text for developing visual arts assessment for grades…

This manual, which is provided as a resource for Illinois School Districts and which incorporates some of the materials in the Alaska Department of Education's Assessment Handbook, is designed to meet the requirements of Public Act 84-126 and to help practitioners develop student assessment plans of local usefulness. Areas covered in the…

Describes a project involving four rural school districts that uses interactive cable television to link classrooms and teach advanced high school courses prohibitively expensive for any one system to offer alone. This report briefly describes how the system works and discusses objectives, teacher preparation, funding, and evaluation procedures.…

This guide, the first in a series of 13 publications, is designed to be used for evaluations of local education agencies (LEA) in Illinois. It introduces the series and provides an overview of the 12 local leader guides that follow. Each of these guides describes a specific evaluation activity and suggests purposes, methods, and events for…

This document, one of 12 guides that have been developed to facilitate evaluation by and for local education agency (LEA) personnel in Illinois, covers the evaluation of instructional materials, both print and audiovisual. The activity is presented in three parts. The first part is an inventory of instructional materials that are currently owned…

This document, one of 12 guides that have been developed to facilitate evaluation by and for local education agency (LEA) personnel in Illinois, covers the analysis of community resources, an activity that has as its primary objective the evaluation of the LEA's use of those resources available in the community, such as businesses, labor unions,…

This report outlines development of a plan for assessing state and local efforts in the elimination of sex bias and discrimination in vocational education in Illinois. The first section presents in chart form the review of Department of Adult, Vocational, and Technical Education data sources on sex equity. The second section contains the Plan to…

This document, one of 12 guides that have been developed to facilitate evaluation by and for local education agency (LEA) personnel in Illinois, covers six areas: (1) student evaluation of instruction, an activity to collect data for use in making decisions regarding program, course, and lesson planning; (2) provision for individual differences;…