In March 2012, CCRC released two studies examining how well two widely used assessment tests—COMPASS and ACCUPLACER—predict the subsequent performance of entering students in their college-level courses. The studies, Do High-Stakes Placement Exams Predict College Success? and Predicting Success in College: The Importance of Placement Tests and High School Transcripts, can be found at http://ccr...

Background/Context: The prevailing theory of action underlying No Child Left Behind’s high-stakes testing and accountability ratings is that schools and students held accountable to these measures will automatically increase educational output as educators try harder, schools will adopt more effective methods, and students will learn more. In Texas, the centerpiece of high school accountability...

The U.S. priority on testing and accountability challenges school administrators to adopt, adapt or develop assessment systems that provide concrete evidence in particular subject matter areas such as science. Curricular programs emphasizing constructivist learning approaches and complex reasoning such as scientific inquiry are often not well matched to the assessment instruments used to evalua...

This study constitutes an attempt to see what Language assessment literacy (LAL) isfor three groups of stakeholders, namely LAL test developers, LAL instructors, andLAL test-takers. The perceptions of the former group were derived from the contentanalysis of the latest version of the LAL test, and those of the latter 2 groups wereassessed through a survey designed by the researcher. Participant...

Critical Language Assessment (CLA) argues that language testing is a form of social practice and an agent of cultural, social, educational as well as ideological agendas. As such this article scrutinized the power that different groups of people including, teachers, students and their parents own at the levels of developing, administrating and interpreting Iranian University Entrance Examinatio...

American schools are awash in standardized testing. Students are spending more and more time on state-mandated, high-stakes tests linked to state standards. There are variations among the states in terms of how often they test students, what subjects they test, whether their exams are normor criterion-referenced, and whether multiple-choice questions are supplemented by other question types. Bu...