Assessment and Accountability
Editor’s Note
Assessment and accountability go hand in hand in the effort to improve academic achievement for all children. These articles investigate emerging trends in assessment (including informative assessment and value-added techniques), probe the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, and raise important questions about high-stakes testing and its impact on student learning.
By Margaret Heritage
Do children in school have rights? According to the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), they do. The CRC stipulates that education is a child’s right and that every child under the age of 18 has the right not to be discriminated against.
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Challenges for assessment
By W. James Popham
Our nation is currently caught up in an enormous educational challenge: to see whether the vast majority of our states cannot only adopt identical curriculum standards in mathematics and English language arts (ELA) but also devise suitable instructional and assessment systems linked to those standards.
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By Robert Rothman
The Common Core State Standards are one of the most significant initiatives in American education in decades. Yet the swiftness with which they were developed and adopted has left educators uncertain about exactly what they are. A number of myths about the standards have emerged.
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An interview with Joan L. Herman
By Nancy Walser
Joan L. Herman has studied the science of student assessment for more than 30 years. She is the former director and current senior scientist at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the editor of Educational Assessment.
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