For this study, researchers critically reviewed documents pertaining to the highest profile of the 15 teacher evaluation lawsuits that occurred throughout the U.S. as pertaining to the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers. In New Mexico, teacher plaintiffs contested how they were being evaluated and held accountable using a homegrown…

The purpose of this report is to investigate the feasibility of constructing a school-level measure of students' academic growth from kindergarten to grade 3, and to assess the validity and precision of that measure. The study measured schoolwide student growth for reading and math using student growth percentiles based on Maryland's 2014/15…

The Every Student Succeeds Act requires that English Learners (ELs) are included in annual state testing (grades 3-8 and once in high school) and included in each state's accountability system disaggregated by subgroup to ensure that they receive the support they need to learn English, participate fully in their education experience, and graduate…

The Every Student Succeeds Act requires states to identify schools with low-performing student subgroups for Targeted Support and Improvement or Additional Targeted Support and Improvement. Random differences between students' true abilities and their test scores, also called measurement error, reduce the statistical reliability of the performance…

This Snapshot highlights key findings from a study that used Bayesian stabilization to improve the reliability (long-term stability) of subgroup proficiency measures that the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) uses to identify schools for Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI) or Additional Targeted Support and Improvement (ATSI). The…

The "Stabilizing Subgroup Proficiency Results to Improve the Identification of Low-Performing Schools" study used Bayesian stabilization to improve the reliability (long-term stability) of subgroup proficiency measures that the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) uses to identify schools for Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI)…

Perceived shortage of principals, increased accountability demands, the changing role of principals, and the growing influence of the state over school administration have created a set of challenges for principal certification and licensure that have propelled a renewed need for analysis of certification and licensure processes. Recent calls to…

States and districts have expressed interest in administering the ACT® to 10th-grade students. Given that the ACT was designed to be administered in the spring of 11th grade or fall of 12th grade, the appropriateness of this use should be evaluated. As such, the focus of this paper is to summarize empirical evidence evaluating the use of the ACT…

Including growth models based on student test scores in teacher evaluations effectively holds teachers individually accountable for students improving their test scores. While an attractive policy for state administrators and advocates of education reform, value-added measures have been fraught with problems, and their use in teacher evaluation is…

This chapter is a research summary of the author's doctoral dissertation completed in May, 2015, which investigates the way Standardized Assessment (SA) is used in state educational accountability structures. This quasi-experimental quantitative study found that SA scores trend towards consistency over time, and that there is additional variance,…

This study examined the viability of the Sentence Verification Technique (SVT; Royer, Hastings, & Hook, 1979) assessment tool as a curriculum-based measure of science content learning. Its perceived compatibility with statewide accountability test expectations made SVT a candidate for use in content-focused response to intervention frameworks.…

Koretz, in his article published in this issue, provides compelling arguments that the high stakes currently associated with accountability testing lead to behavioral changes in students, teachers, and other stakeholders that often have negative consequences, such as inflated scores. Koretz goes on to argue that these negative consequences require…

The implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) has placed increased accountability for outcomes on both students and teachers. To address the current youth literacy crisis in the United States, the CCSS call for students to read increasingly complex informational and literary texts. Since teachers are held accountable for students'…

This guide is designed to assist States, agencies, and/or facilities who work with youth who are neglected, delinquent, or at-risk (N or D). The information in the guide will benefit those who are (a) interested in implementing pre-posttests, (b) in the process of identifying an appropriate pre-posttest, or (c) ready to evaluate current testing…

This research focuses on ePortfolio assessment strategies that yield important accountability and reporting information. Under foundational categories of reliability, validity, and fairness, we present methods of gathering evidence from ePortfolio scores and their relationship to demographic information (gender, race/ethnicity, and socio-economic…