Researchers Tackle Assessments Used to Advance Learning

Los Angeles

How can states tell if their tests adequately reflect their academic-content standards? What’s the best way to determine the value that schools add to student learning? How can researchers capture the quality of instruction going on in classrooms?

Those were just some of the questions posed at a national conference here Sept. 9-10 for which researchers are still seeking answers.

"We need a systematic research agenda addressing both assessment design and accountability design," said Daniel Koretz, a professor at Harvard University’s graduate school of education. Finding the answers to such questions is particularly pressing now, given the demands of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, researchers said during the annual conference of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and...