Recent educational accountability efforts have married student assessments with reform mandates and sanctions. As a result, students--beginning in early elementary grades--are feeling the pressures of this new era of high-stakes accountability. This article chronicles a story of the consequences of high-stakes testing on a father and his son.…

In all the elementary schools in the county, benchmark assessments were given six times a year in math and three times in reading; they were modeled after the questions anticipated on the Maryland School Assessment (MSA). Although results were sent to the school board, there were no cosmic consequences for the hourlong tests; they were supposed to…

This chapter consists of a conversation between a third-grade teacher and a teacher educator about the advantages of the portfolio method of assessment. The advantages of portfolios are that they are a powerful learning tool as well as an assessment tool, they can make the separate subjects in a curriculum come together in an integrated way, and…