Center for Standards, Assessment, and Accountability

Keyword: Accountability

Strength in Numbers: State Spending on K-12 Assessment Systems

This report and accompanying webinar explore the costs of assessment systems currently used in different states and the potential financial savings involved in using collaborative assessments such as those being developed by the PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessment consortia.

Designing Performance Assessment Tasks

In this article, Phillip Cohen argues that “creating effective assessment tasks requires thinking through curriculum content to establish learning outcomes, then designing performance activities that will allow students to demonstrate their achievement of those outcomes, and specifying criteria by which they will be evaluated.” After a short introduction illustrating the benefits and basic methods behind […]

Contextual Factors that Influence the Achievement of Australia’s Indigenous Students: Results from PISA 2000-2006

From the Publisher: “The analyses presented in this report show that there are still large gaps in the socioeconomic background of [Australian] Indigenous and non- Indigenous students. Lower levels of attendance at pre-school, less access to home educational resources, and parents with lower levels of experience of education contribute to many Indigenous children starting school at […]

International Benchmarking: State Education Performance Standards

This report uses international benchmarking to examine the expectations gap between what students are expected to learn in some states versus other states. The report assumes that each state’s expectations are embodied in the stringency of the performance standards it uses on its own state accountability tests. The overall finding in the study is that […]

How Are States Reporting on College and Career Readiness?

From the Publisher: “Preparing students for success in college and careers is one of the primary goals of our education system. How states track and report progress toward the goal of college and career readiness is important for public accountability and transparency; making data available publicly provides a window into how students – and the […]

Moving Toward Equity Data Review Tool: Getting Started With Equitable Access Data

Adapted from the publisher’s summary: “The Moving Toward Equity Data Review Tool and its supporting resources are intended to help education leaders understand and assess equitable access data to support a root-cause analysis and, ultimately, draft a State Plan to Ensure Equitable Access to Excellent Educators. The activities in this tool introduce metrics, [address] staff capacity […]