The introduction of assessment orientated policy in 2016 marks a significant change in Scottish education as it will establish standardised national testing. Teachers in Gaelic medium education are well placed to offer insights as they have had considerable autonomy regarding assessment and this paper is the first to consider the impact of this…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is an integral measure of academic progress over time. It is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what our nation's students know and can do in various subjects such as civics, mathematics, reading, science, technology and engineering literacy, U.S. history, and…

Studies have shown that school leaders are important in work with large-scale policy reforms in schools. However, the issue of how school leaders and teachers discuss and enact policy is under-studied. This article explores the discursive processes in school leaders' and teachers' policy enactment as they construct responses to policy. The data…

A broad range of factors go into weighing how well the nation's schools are living up to their responsibility to ensure that students are on track academically and prepared to take their place in a complex, ever-changing society. This third and final installment of "Quality Counts 2018" digs deeply into test scores, high school…

Each year the National Reference Test (NRT) reports the proportions of students achieving at or above three key GCSE grades in English and mathematics. The NRT is therefore uniquely placed as a Key Stage 4 assessment which compares performance directly at ability level, to contribute to the evidence on the impact of disruption to education due to…

Parents, have you ever wondered how NAEP fits into the big picture and what its results tell us about education? Are you curious about how NAEP sparks change across the country, and what resources are available for you and your child? Find out all of this information and more in a new brochure that the National Center for Education Statistics…

As a result of the growing use of state and national testing of literacy and numeracy among school students, there are increasing demands for teachers to interpret assessment data. In light of this, there is a need to provide benchmarks or a framework that identifies critical aspects of teachers' understanding that are needed to interpret data…

The main aim of this study was to investigate the impact of formal teacher competence on pupils' reading achievement. The data comes from the Swedish participation in PIRLS 2001 in grade 3. Information was obtained from pupils (n = 5271) and teachers (n = 351). The analyses were conducted using 2-level structural equation modeling. Teacher…

In the twenty years since independence, new Eurasian nation-states of the former Soviet Union have introduced major changes to the way students are admitted to institutions of higher education. Azerbaijan (1992), Uzbekistan (1993), Kazakhstan (1999), Russia (2001), Kyrgyzstan (2002), Ukraine (2004), and Georgia (2005) have all created new state or…

Aligning curriculum change and assessment reforms has been a topic of great concern in Namibia for over the past 23 years. This is because during the pre-colonial period and continuing in post-independence Namibia, national examinations have been used mainly for the certification and selection of learners at Junior and Senior secondary school…

This paper examines the ideological construction of educational discourses embedded within the South Korean print media. Significantly, these discourses have recently promoted the resurrection of a sweeping national testing and test results release policy. Through careful examination of the "test plus release" policy, the authors show…

Testing and test results can be used in different ways. They can be used for regulation and control, but they can also be a pedagogic tool for assessment of student proficiency in order to target teaching, improve learning and facilitate local pedagogical leadership. To serve these purposes the test has to be used for low stakes purposes, and to…

Using data from the Digest of Educational Statistics, this article argues that an intergenerational comparison is a more productive, progressive method to interpret data used to gauge the achievement gap. It applies this method by comparing the academic achievement scores and educational outcomes of African Americans over a nearly 70-year period,…

In response to a Congressional mandate, an evaluation of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was undertaken beginning in 2004. The evaluation design included a series of studies that encompassed the breadth and selected areas of depth of the NAEP program. Studies were identified with input from key stakeholders and were…

Given the changing landscape of educational accountability at the local, state, and national levels, and the changes in the uses of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), including the evolving uses of NAEP as a policy tool to interpret state assessment and accountability systems, an explicit statement of the current and potential…