The Future of Test-Based Educational Accountability PDF Download

Author: Katherine Ryan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135590885
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
In recent decades testing has become a much more visible and high-stakes accountability mechanism that is now seen as a powerful tool that can be used to drive school improvement. The purpose of this book is to identify and analyze the key issues associated with test-based educational accountability and to chart the future of educational accountability research. Chapter contributions are intended to be forward looking rather than a compendium of what has happened in the past. The book provides an accessible discussion of issues such as validity, test equating, growth modeling, fairness for special populations, causal inferences, and misuses of accountability data.

Author: Laura S. Hamilton
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833033980
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Test-based accountability systems that attach high stakes to standardized test results have raised a number of issues on educational assessment and accountability. Do these high-stakes tests measure student achievement accurately? How can policymakers and educators attach the right consequences to the results of these tests? And what kinds of tradeoffs do these testing policies introduce? This book responds to the growing emphasis on high-stakes testing and offers recommendations for more-effective test-based accountability systems.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
This book was written in response to school policymaking's growing emphasis on testing. During the 1990s, a number of states implemented educational accountability systems that assigned consequences for students, teachers, or schools on the basis of student test scores. The 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (the "No Child Left Behind NCLB act of 2001") makes such test-based accountability a requirement for all 50 states. The goal of the law is ". . . to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging state academic achievement standards and state academic assessments." The purpose of this book is to help educators and educational policymakers understand test-based accountability so they can use it effectively in the service of this goal. States have considerable flexibility in developing their accountability systems, so long as those systems have at their core an appropriate feedback mechanism. Data on student achievement are collected annually and compared with a specific target. Failure to attain the target leads to successively harsher sanctions for schools, including ultimately reconstitution; success leads to recognition and financial rewards. when combined with greater flexibility from federal regulations and parental options to obtain supplemental educational services or move students from less-successful schools, these test-based incentives are supposed to lead to improvement for all schools.

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309128145
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 111

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Book Description
In recent years there have been increasing efforts to use accountability systems based on large-scale tests of students as a mechanism for improving student achievement. The federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is a prominent example of such an effort, but it is only the continuation of a steady trend toward greater test-based accountability in education that has been going on for decades. Over time, such accountability systems included ever-stronger incentives to motivate school administrators, teachers, and students to perform better. Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education reviews and synthesizes relevant research from economics, psychology, education, and related fields about how incentives work in educational accountability systems. The book helps identify circumstances in which test-based incentives may have a positive or a negative impact on student learning and offers recommendations for how to improve current test-based accountability policies. The most important directions for further research are also highlighted. For the first time, research and theory on incentives from the fields of economics, psychology, and educational measurement have all been pulled together and synthesized. Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education will inform people about the motivation of educators and students and inform policy discussions about NCLB and state accountability systems. Education researchers, K-12 school administrators and teachers, as well as graduate students studying education policy and educational measurement will use this book to learn more about the motivation of educators and students. Education policy makers at all levels of government will rely on this book to inform policy discussions about NCLB and state accountability systems.

Author: Martin Carnoy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113593858X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
When it comes to the issue of US education reform, hopeful politicians, liberal and conservative alike, have long touted the promises of 'standards-based accountability'. But do accountability-based reforms actually work? What happens when they encounter the formidable challenge of the comprehensive high school?The New Accountability explores the current wave of assessment-based accountability reforms at the high school level in the United States.

Author: Fenwick W. English
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810839717
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Why do testing and accountability efforts in today's schools fail? In Deep Curriculum Alignment, English and Steffy explore the flaws in state mandated testing, advocating a more comprehensive approach to teaching and testing. This highly practical book will guide you into a deeply aligned curriculum that produces academic results and a level playing field. Each chapter covers principles of testing and curriculum building, and concludes with a summary of the key concepts presented. The authors survey various studies, present the ethical dilemmas involved in testing, and present a step-by-step guide to pedagogical parallelism and alignment.

Author: George W. Elford
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810843851
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
This text addresses the problem of the overuse of standardized testing. It argues that so-called test-based reform has given rise to the "cram curriculum" and turned schools into test-prep centres. Overlooked are teachers, who observe students, and are the primary source of information on learning.

Author: Daniel Koretz
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022640871X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
America's leading expert in educational testing and measurement openly names the failures caused by today's testing policies and provides a blueprint for doing better. 6 x 9.

Author: Williamson M. Evers
Publisher: Hoover Inst Press Publication
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Scholars from history, economics, political science, and psychology describe the present state of school accountability, how it evolved, how it succeeded and failed, and how it can be improved. They review the history behind the ongoing conflict between educators and policymakers over accountability and testing, describe various accountability schemes, and analyze the costs of accountability. Case studies of three states with strong school systems compare how accountability works in practice. Evers is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Author: Robert L. Linn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Book Description
The ever-increasing reliance on student performance on tests as a way of holding schools and educators accountable is discussed. Comparisons are made between state accountability requirements and the accountability requirements of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. The resulting mixed messages being given by the two systems are discussed. Features of NCLB accountability and state accountability systems that contribute to the identification of a school as meeting goals according to NCLB but failing to do so according to the state accountability system, or vise versa, are discussed. These include the multiple hurdles of NCLB, the comparison of performance against a fixed target rather than changes in achievement, and the definition of performance goals. Some suggestions are provided for improving the NCLB accountability system.