Ongoing or recently completed across the United States are a series of lawsuits via which teacher plaintiffs are contesting how they are being evaluated using value-added models (VAMs) as part of states'/districts' teacher accountability systems. To investigate the empirical and pragmatic matters addressed in court, researchers conducted a case…

Good governance is an unavoidable requirement to improve the health of the administrative system in a society. Thus, the purpose of this study is to design an effective model of good governance based on the proposed criteria of Muslim thinkers for organizational health in governmental organizations in Kerman province. Regarding the purpose, this…

This chapter characterises the two key purposes of assessment, formative and summative, within a general model of assessment of student learning. It discusses reliability and validity issues in relation to the two purposes and considers formative and summative purposes as related and can be brought together in developing a dependable approach to…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) aims to ensure that all students are college- and career-ready by requiring all schools to implement high-quality accountability systems and services for students. The ESSA impacts assessment practices in schools by requiring staff to account for a broader range of variables related to student well-being,…

In changing accountability contexts, policymakers are engaging in international dialogue and collaborative efforts with new opportunities to reframe conversations about how to measure teacher quality and to (re) design and implement evaluation systems accordingly to ensure that they are fair, useable, feasible, and accurate. This study examined…

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…

Research has already established the boundless potential of teachers in assisting effective learning processes, and there is still a need to expand research to illustrate interrelation and connection between the construct of teachers' professional accountability which moderates and directs student learning. To this end, a comprehensive review of…

The study aimed to identify the barriers to accountability implementation in the education directorates and to know the suggestions for applying accountability in the education directorates in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from the study members' point of view. For the purpose of achieving the objectives and procedures of the study, the descriptive…

Being an expert involves explaining how things are supposed to work, and, perhaps more important, why things might not work as supposed. In this study, researchers surveyed scholars with expertise in value-added models (VAMs) to solicit their opinions about the uses and potential of VAMs for teacher-level accountability purposes (for example, in…

The aim of the study was to reveal the future justification to adopt governance system at the Jordanian Universities from the perspective of educational experts. The study society was the academic staff in the field of education at Al-Balqa Applied University and Jordan University, at the first semester of the academic year 2013-2014. The study…

California is taking a bold new approach to the evaluation of school performance, the provision of data to parents and educators, and the use of accountability to improve student learning. Broadly speaking, the state is stepping away from the consequential accountability that was compelled under No Child Left Behind and toward a system that relies…

Across the nation, states and districts are in the process of building better teacher evaluation systems that not only identify highly effective teachers but also systematically provide data and feedback that can be used to improve teacher practice. The "Practical Guide to Designing Comprehensive Teacher Evaluation Systems" is a tool…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015 (Public Law 114-95) requires each state to create a plan for its statewide accountability system. In particular, ESSA calls for state plans that include strategies for reporting education outcomes by grade for all students and for economically disadvantaged students, students from major racial and…

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…

Institutional report cards are increasingly being used by higher educational institutions to present academic outcomes to external audiences of prospective students and parents, as well as program and institutional evaluators. While some prospective students are served by national transparency measures most users mine information from the…