Assessment and Accountability

The current educational reform movement is focused on accountability for student achievement results (Fuhrman, 1999) and on the premise that all students can and must achieve a high level of mastery of traditional academic subjects. As part of building a single accountability system for all students, states have had to develop content standards and assessments aligned to those standards.

There are multiple challenges around accountability:

1. Aligning assessments and curricula with content and performance standards
   Initially, the challenge was to align content and performance standards at the state level. Largely, this challenge has been addressed by states. The new challenge is to align standards-based curricula with instruction and assessment at the classroom level.
   
   
   • In addressing this new challenge, states and districts must develop an infrastructure that supports the implementation of standards-based curricula, instruction, and assessment. For example,
     • Data collection tools for classroom observations need to be developed so teachers can get feedback on their practice and teacher leaders can target professional development needs.
     • Classroom assessments need to be aligned with content standards so that teachers have ongoing feedback on student learning needs.
       
       
2. Designing and validating accommodations of assessments for children with special needs
   Another challenge is the design and validation of accommodations of assessments for children with special needs or who are linguistically diverse.
   
   
   • Understanding which accommodations work best with which children and at which stages in their development is critical to ensuring that schools, districts and states are held accountable for the learning of all students. Research into the effectiveness of accommodations to expand valid testing of special populations is needed.