Accessing Information on State Assessment and Accountability Practices

As a teacher, you are certain to be affected by state standards for your students' achievement. You'll also be affected by the growing movement to hold students, teachers, and schools accountable for their levels of achievement.

Margaret Goertz and Mark Duffy of the Consortium for Policy Research (CPRE) helped conduct a survey of state practices and then prepared a 2001 report titled "Assessment and Accountability Across the 50 States." The report will be available at http://www.gse.upenn.edu/cpre and can be obtained free from the CPRE at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, 3440 Market Street, Suite 560, Philadelphia 19104-3325.

The authors found that all states have "embarked on educational initiatives related to high standards and challenging content" that involve a "common set of academic standards for all students, the assessments that measure student performance, and accountability systems that are at least partially focused on student outcomes." They also reported that all the states publish, or require districts to publish, school or district report cards, and that thirty-nine states with statewide assessments categorize achievement reports by race/ethnicity and gender. But they conclude that there is wide variability in how challenging the assessments are, the levels of performance considered proficient, the rewards and punishments that are in place based on a school's or district's performance, and the amount and types of assistance made available to low-performing schools.

In a related effort, the CPRE has established an interactive Web site at which you can access profiles that detail the methods individual states use to assess student performance. These include the states' methods for responding to several policy and practical issues related to standards, including the following:

• Determining how special populations such as learning-disabled students and limited-English students are to be assessed
• Determining how schools and districts are to be held accountable
• Determining how Title 1 schools are to be treated.

Go to http://www.gse.upenn.edu/cpre/doc/pubs/profiles.html, where you can examine information for your own and other states. This should enable you to obtain answers to questions such as the following:

1. Are there state tests in your subject area? If yes, at what grades?
2. Must students pass a test in your subject area in order to graduate?
3. Are changes planned for testing in your state? If yes, what are they?
4. What assistance, if any, is provided for low-performing schools in your state?
5. How does your state compare in assessment and accountability policies and practices with nearby states?

You also can obtain information by state about the specific standards assessed in various grades and subjects by searching at the Web site of "Achieve, Inc." (Achieve is a bipartisan, nonprofit organization established in 1996 by the governors and corporate leaders.) Go to the search page at www.achieve.org/achieve/achievestart.nsf/Search?OpenForm, where you can learn, for example, that the first English standard expected of sixth graders in Alabama involves application of "strategies to construct meaning from oral, written, and visual material." What are the English standards for sixth graders in your state?



Other places you can find information about state standards and their assessment include:

McREL Standards Database
This is a collection of content standards gathered by the Mid-Continent Regional Educational Laboratory. Browse by subject or look for suggestions for activities or unit designs.

Nation's Report Card
The National Assessment of Educational Progress is a long-running national testing program. You can find out where students in your state rank compared to those across the nation in the "State Profiles" section of this web site.

Quality Counts
The weekly publication, Education Week, publishes and annual rating of all the states' standards and assessment programs.

Sites Offering Academic and Skill Standards
This is a page of links to standards-related sites, from the U.S. Department of Education.

State Standards
A web site with links to the content standards of each state and suggestions for lesson plans that support the standards.