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Copyright © 2006 by CCSSO. All rights reserved.

This paper resulted from the work of the Study Group on Transitions in Assessments from IASA to
NCLB composed of state educational specialists and consultants of the Comprehensive Assessment
Systems for ESEA Title I (CAS) State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards (SCASS).
The members of the study group benefited from discussions among SCASS colleagues throughout
2005 and 2006:
Mildred Bazemore, North Carolina
Annette Bohling, Wyoming
Kelly Burling, North Carolina
Carol Crothers, Nevada (Co-chair)
Arthur Halbrook, CCSSO
Susan Ketchum, Wisconsin
Bernadette Morris, Louisiana
Les Morse, Alaska
Ed Roeber, Michigan
Grace Ross, ED, Ex-Officio
Lynette Russell, Wisconsin
Cheryl Schroeder, Wyoming
Alan Sheinker, CTB
Gary Skoglund, South Dakota (Co-chair)
Don Watson, New Mexico
Charles Wayne, Pennsylvania
Jan Sheinker, CAS SCASS Coordinator
Arthur Halbrook, CCSSO Editor
This paper was supported by funding from member States of the Comprehensive
Assessment Systems for ESEA Title I State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards
(CAS SCASS), through the Council of Chief State School Officers. Information about the CAS
SCASS is available on the CCSSO website, www.ccsso.org
.
This publication and any comments, observations, recommendations, or conclusions contained herein reflect the work of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the Council of
Chief State School Officers.
Copyright © 2006 by the Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved. i

Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation requires academic content and achievement standards at the contiguous grade levels 3–8 and one grade in the high school span. Because many states previously developed standards for grade spans, state academic content standards and, consequently, academic achievement standards are undergoing revisions to include grade-specific standards or grade-level expectations. The experience of states in attempting to fully align assessments with previously developed academic content standards has produced valuable lessons about the role of standards in an aligned system and the implications of this role for their development and organization. Attention to vision, purpose, and consistency of organization with the uses to be made of the academic content standards provide important guides for their revision.
This paper provides a discussion of lessons learned in addition to suggestions and recommendations to state departments and state policy makers for revising academic content standards in a manner to support the improved alignment of assessments with the standards. A checklist is provided to help states consider what actions they can take to enhance consistency within and across content areas and to improve their usefulness in guiding the development of aligned assessments in the standards-based system. An argument is made that consistency in the organization of academic content standards documents serves not only to enhance alignment of academic content standards and the comprehensive assessment systems, but also the productive use of the document by all stakeholders.
A major challenge for states in implementing the requirements of recent federal requirements is identifying ways that states can create academic content standards that serve usefully for both state and local purposes, especially to direct the development and implementation of their student assessment system. This paper will describe some of the purposes and uses for academic content standards and how best to accomplish the purpose of creating an aligned standards and assessment system.
The federal requirement that all states create content standards to guide their assessment systems first occurred in the 1994 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(ESEA) called the Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA). States were required to create and implement content standards that were to be rigorous and be used to guide the assessments that states were also required to implement. These requirements included the assessment of all students, including those with significant disabilities, at one elementary, one middle school, and one high school grade.
These requirements were strengthened and expanded in the most recent reauthorization of
ESEA—the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. Student assessments were to be expanded to include every grade at 3 through 8 in addition to one high school grade in mathematics and reading (or English language arts), as well as science at one elementary, one middle school, and one high school grade. These assessments are to be aligned with the academic content standards created by each state. The alignment of the assessments to the academic content standards is required by
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
NCLB and is the responsibility of each state accepting NCLB funding. While federal law defined when the academic content standards would need to be developed, the law did not define how such sets of standards should be organized or how specific they should be.
In addition, states are required under NCLB to create academic achievement standards.
These academic achievement standards must be aligned with the standards and assessments used.
Achievement standards must be determined for at least three levels—a level that is deemed to be
“proficient” (aligned with the content standards), a level above this (“advanced”) and a level below the level of proficient (“basic”). Most states have created four levels of performance, including two levels below the proficient level in order to designate progress steps toward the proficient level.
States are required to submit evidence about their standards and assessment system to a peer review process to ensure the standards and assessment system developed is both fully aligned and technically sound. While the peer review process will not serve to approve the academic content standards themselves, states are required to show how well the assessments are aligned with the academic content standards. The peer review questions pertaining to the alignment of the standards and assessment system are shown in Appendix A.
Although states typically develop their assessments after the academic content standards are created, the alignment of the academic content standards with the assessments was not always satisfactory. As a result, states are seeking ways to ensure the alignment of their academic content standards and statewide assessments can be better substantiated in advance. Rather than augment assessments, use assessments that are overly lengthy, or risk federal sanctions using assessments that are not fully aligned, educators are searching for ways to create standards and assessment systems that work together to meet their purposes.
What Are Academic Content Standards?
Content standards mean different things to different individuals. Even the name “content standards” as used in IASA has been changed in recent years to academic content standards in
NCLB. In the Comprehensive Assessment Systems State Collaborative for State Assessments and
Student Standards (CAS SCASS) Handbook for the Development of Performance Standards ,
Hansche (1998) describes content standards:
Content standards should adhere to the following
• be specific enough to provide a vision of expectations relative to a curriculum (e.g., the student can apply lessons learned from and make extensions of a text and evaluate texts critically)
• be aligned with performance standards, assessments, principles of learning, curriculum, and instruction
• be clear and understandable to teachers, students, and parents
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
• be assessable in a variety of ways
• be illustrated by examples of student work
• be useful for defining and supporting good instruction (p. 13)
Hansche (1998) also provides a checklist for defining standards, adapted from Mitchell
(1996), for differentiating them from curriculum:
Content standards are concerned with “big ideas.” Standards should contain the major concepts and essential ideas that students must master in order to grasp the content. Being able to understand mathematics by making inferences is different from memorizing formulas.
Content standards are accurate and sound. Standards should reflect the most recent, widely accepted scholarship in the discipline. Because facts and concepts change rapidly today, when new information is constantly being generated, maintaining accuracy and balance among the important concepts requires continual revision. Documents related to content learning should be updated regularly.
Content standards are clear and useful. Standards should be specific enough to drive the curriculum. They should not be written in language so abstract or technical that teachers, parents, and students cannot easily understand them.
Content standards are parsimonious. Standards should reflect the depth of learning.
Standards should be few and brief, and short enough to be memorable because they are strong, bold statements, not details of content description (the details are in the curriculum).
Content standards are built by consensus. Standards must be arrived at by most of the constituency who will use them. Conversations about standards are as important as the standards themselves.
Content standards are assessable. Standards should have verbs that indicate an assessable action. Words like “compare,” “explain,” or “analyze” are useful for assessments. Words like “understand” or “appreciate” are not.
Content standards are for students. Standards should describe to students what they are responsible for knowing. The standards should be clear and understandable to them.
Content standards are developmental. Standards should evidence a clear sense of increased knowledge and sophistication of skills. Standards that simply repeat content and specify “more” at successive levels are not useful. Benchmarks, or target levels for assessment, should indicate developmentally appropriate content knowledge and skills.
Content standards are visionary. Standards should be the goal of student learning. They should not describe “what is” or “this is where we are,” but rather, “this is where we want our students to be.” (p.14)
While each state is different and there is no universally acceptable determination of which terms states are to use, typically states use the term “academic content standards” to apply to broad
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB statements of educational outcomes in academic areas such as English language arts (reading and writing), mathematics, science, and social studies.
Why Are Content Standards Developed?
States create academic content standards for several reasons. These reasons pertain to the manner in which academic content standards are to be used at the state and local levels. In addition, local school districts may also create academic content standards for similar or different purposes.
First, states created academic content standards because they were required to do so by federal or state law such as IASA, NCLB, and state mandates. In addition to English language arts
(or reading or reading and writing) and mathematics, as required by federal law, many states have also created academic content standards in science, which is soon to be required by NCLB, and social studies, although it is not required by federal law. A few states have created academic content standards in additional areas such as the arts, health education, and physical education as well.
Second, in addition to federal requirements to develop and implement academic content standards, some states were also required by state law to develop content standards for state purposes. These states might develop academic content standards for multiple purposes:
• as the basis for end-of-course examinations at the high school level,
• for grade promotion in the elementary level
• to define the minimum skills needed to graduate from high school with a regular high school diploma
Each of these mandates required the creation of a list of content standards in many of the same content areas required for federal purposes.
Third, some states went beyond the creation of broad targets for student learning to create much more specific guides for instructional purposes. The goal of these documents is to show classroom teachers the instruction that would assist students to accomplish the broad targets or benchmarks identified at the state level. The result was to create instructional sequences for use by teachers with a substantial number of “targets” that would pace day-to-day classroom instruction.
These documents serve to show local educators how to provide the daily instruction needed by students to do well on the periodic or summative assessments.
How Are Content Standards Used?
States use academic content standards in several ways:
• as indicators of the knowledge and skills that students should possess at the end of certain grades or grade clusters
• as the basis for creating large scale assessment programs
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
• as a guide for determining and reporting school accountability efforts required by federal and state laws
• as the basis for accrediting schools in some states
As indicators of the knowledge and skills that students should possess at certain grades or grade clusters, these standards can serve to help teachers determine what curriculum and classroom instruction in the content areas is needed. While academic content standards provide the overall framework for instructional programs, they do not describe step-by-step, day-to-day instructional plans for schools. These academic content standards do show schools what such instruction ultimately needs to accomplish. Thus, the academic content standards demonstrate the culminating goals of such daily work and become the basis for organizing instruction locally.
As the basis for statewide large-scale assessment programs, the academic content standards define the content and skills to be measured in “standards-based assessments.” The assessments may be custom created or are norm-referenced assessments that have been augmented to align with the content standards. In either case, federal law requires that the assessments used be aligned with the academic content standards and that the standards are used as the basis for reporting of assessment results.
As a guide for determining and reporting school accountability efforts required by federal and state laws, the academic achievement standards must be demonstrably aligned with the academic content standards and the student assessments used to measure them. NCLB also requires that these academic achievement standards be used as the basis for reporting student performance for at least three levels of achievement in relation to standards, for developing behavioral statements that describe each of these achievement levels, and for setting cut scores that differentiate these achievement levels. Thus, the academic content standards anchor not only the assessments that are developed and used, but they also serve to set the academic achievement standards used to judge student performance on the content and skills included in the academic content standards.
Some states base school accreditation on the process of improving student performance and the resultant assessment information (and school’s status or progress on those measures). Hence, the academic content standards are also used as the basis or one important variable among several in how these states accredit schools. Accreditation of schools may be an important signal to parents and the public as to the quality of the school. In addition, schools that do poorly in school accreditation programs may face sanctions of increasing severity, including dissolution in some cases.
At the local school district level, academic content standards may be used as the basis for several activities:
• day-to-day decisions about what is to be the focus of instruction
• guiding the selection of instructional materials
• the development or selection of local short cycle or classroom-based assessments
• grading and communicating instructional results to parents
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
As the basis for the day-to-day decisions about what is taught and how it is taught, standards provide a structure around which to organize and implement curriculum and instruction. Some confuse the statements of outcomes typically included in academic content standards documents with the curriculum or set of instructional activities to provide the actual skills to be taught to students. This confusion may result in standards too numerous to measure and insufficient curriculum definition to guide instructional activities.
Because academic content standards show educators what instruction should accomplish, they can be used to help guide the selection of the district or school instructional materials. In a well-aligned system, the selection of instructional materials is guided by the degree to which any set of materials focus instruction at the breadth, depth, and complexity of the standards.
The academic content standards and instructional plans may be used as the basis for the development or selection of the assessments to be used locally in support of instruction, whether classroom-based or school-wide. The assessments that local school districts may select include pacing tests, periodic assessments, or annual assessments.
Finally, academic content standards can be used as the basis for grading and communicating instructional results to parents. Because the academic content standards describe key skills that students should attain, parents (and students) want to know how well each student is progressing in learning those skills as the year unfolds.
Typical Formats for Content Standards Documents
If the academic content standards from each of the states (and local school systems) were collected, one would quickly realize there is no common format among the documents.
Additionally, not all sets of standards are equal. Some standards documents present many more standards, some wordier, some more focused on or more useful for one purpose than others.
Typically, sets of academic content standards are hierarchal in nature and contain not only
“standards” but may also have further delineations of the standards that are called “benchmarks,”
“expectations,” or other names to delineate or clarify grade level expectations. These serve to further define the content standards by grade level, grade range, or single course. Supporting skills, indicators, or enablers may also be provided for each standard as an additional means of clarifying the content standards and defining the content or skills that are a pathway to the grade level content standards or expectations. Some states have a substantial number of these benchmarks or gradelevel expectations per grade level while others contain a much smaller number.
In some states, the content standards are the same across the entire spectrum of grades (e.g.,
K–12) while in other states the content standards are different at each grade level. Others may define content standards in grade ranges (e.g., K–2, 3–5, 6–8, and high school), perhaps with benchmarks or grade level expectations keyed to each grade level. Other states have defined course content expectations for high school courses, in some cases on top of grade 9–12 content standards and benchmarks, and in others, in place of those. In some states, there may be as many as 50, 100, or more content standards per grade level. In other states, however, there may be less than 10
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB standards for all grades. Not only does no common structure exist for standards documents from state to state, these documents may differ from one content area to another within the same state.
The way in which content and skills are delineated from grade to grade may also vary from state to state and content area to content area. State documents may follow several paths:
• repeat skills from grade to grade within all content areas,
• differentiate content and skills to specify at which grade level mastery is to occur, or
• differentiate content and skills from grade to grade in some content areas while repeating them across grades in other content areas.
These variations arise out of differing philosophies from content area to content area. Some content area specialists believe the same skills continue to be taught at each grade level as applied to increasingly complex materials. These content specialists also believe that unless content and skills are restated, these skills will not be revisited in instruction when needed. Other content area specialists believe content and skills emerge and are mastered at specific grade levels and then are subsumed into more complex skills at higher grade levels. Each of these variations presents unique challenges to assessment design for aligned, standards-based tests.
A few sets of state standards may be based on one instructional method, forcing local school systems to teach the skills using a single method favored by the academic content standards. This may not have been done intentionally. Such “structured” sets of standards may be intended as a substitute for curriculum and may be used at the local district level to assure uniformity of instruction and achievement across the school district.
States typically review and revise their academic content standards documents periodically, and it is not uncommon for states to try different formats and levels of specificity when they revise their standards. This is often done in an effort to clarify grade level expectations or to define the
“true” intended content standards. These changes cause a change in vocabulary as well as some adjustment of the assessment and instructional strategies the state and districts use. Hence, a state that has standards and benchmarks might move to a system where they have standards and course content expectations. About the only thing that is clear is that states have chosen different levels of specificity, vocabulary, organization, and purposes for their academic content standards.
Refining Academic Content Standards Documents
Although the sets of standards from the states look different on the surface, the content is often relatively similar, which is not surprising given the influence of national sets of standards on states. The scheduled revision cycle for revisiting standards required by most states provides an opportunity for states to refine standards documents in ways that improve their clarity and alignment for both assessment and instructional purposes.
Ensuring Consistency across Standards Documents . To assure better aligned standards and assessments at either the state or local levels, it is essential that the sponsoring agency
7

Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB determine in advance what the purposes are for the standards and assessment system, how the assessment results will be reported, and what uses will be made of the assessment results. The purposes for the academic achievement standards should drive their format. By using these as guideposts in the creation of the content standards, it is more likely that a well-aligned system will be created. Some key considerations for setting rules for revision of standards should be noted, with consistency serving as a foundation:
• consistency in format and organizational hierarchy across all content standards document
• consistency in “grain size” of standards, as well as any other elements included in the standards documents (e.g., benchmarks, indicators, objectives)
• consistency in the degree to which the document serves dual purposes of communicating standards and curriculum and how the document format will communicate the difference
• consistency in the degree to which the documents for various content areas will overlap (i.e., horizontal alignment)
• consistency in the degree to which the documents repeat the same skills over several grade levels or exclusively assign initial mastery of content and skills to specific grade levels (i.e., vertical alignment)
Ensuring Vertical Alignment of Standards . The state needs to determine how the horizontal and vertical alignment of the standards and assessment system will be assured. Vertical alignment is needed to assure that the progression of rigor of the academic content standards and assessments increases in a developmentally sound manner from one grade level to another. The
Technical Issues in Large-Scale Assessment State Collaborative for Assessment and Student
Standards (TILSA SCASS) in partnership with the Human Resources Research Organization
(HumRRO) have developed a document to help states assess the vertical alignment of their content standards (Wise & Alt, 2005). This method builds upon the Webb (1997) model used by many states to evaluate the alignment of assessments with content standards. Evaluation of the assessment alignment with content standards in the Webb model examines the assessment in terms of categorical concurrence, depth of knowledge, range of knowledge, balance of representation, and source of challenge. The TILSA document concisely defines five dimensions of alignment:
1.
Categorical Concurrence : Is the same content covered?
2.
Depth of Knowledge : Are cognitive requirements between the assessments and standards consistent for each of the content areas covered? Is the same complexity of knowledge (and skill) sought/required?
3.
Range of Knowledge : Is the range of content covered under each of the major content standards similar?
4.
Balance of Representation : Are objectives for a particular standard given the same emphasis?
5.
Source of Challenge : Does test performance actually depend on mastering the target objectives and not on irrelevant knowledge or skill? (p. 4)
In their extension of this model to examine vertical alignment of content standards, the authors recommend asking a set of questions about the content standards:
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
1. What is the nature of content linkages from one grade to the next?
The first question may be addressed in terms of the first four dimensions of Webb’s model:
•
What level of concurrence is there between objectives for the two grades?
•
To what extent do comparable objectives increase in depth from one grade to the next?
•
To what extent does the range of content increase from one grade to the next?
•
How does the balance of representation change from one grade to the next?
2. What is the clarity or quality of these linkages?
The second question is aimed at identifying ways in which the specification of content objectives at each grade might be improved, both to clarify what is expected within a grade and to make clearer the nature of expected growth from one grade to the next (Wise
& Alt, p. 5).
The authors provide a Content Linkage Checklist to help states answer these questions. The authors believe, “By lining up the major areas of content objectives from one grade to the next, we can limit the number of objectives searched in finding corresponding objectives at each higher or lower grade” (Wise & Alt, p. 5).
In this model, content and skills are related across grade levels in one of several ways: broader, deeper, prerequisite, or new. Identical content and skills appearing from one grade level to another do not represent vertical alignment. To refine vertical alignment states may determine that
(a) some content and skills are not mastered in early grades and therefore do not appear as standards until mastery is expected and (b) some content and skills are mastered in the early grades and therefore do not appear as standards beyond the grade at which they are initially mastered.
Ensuring content standards are vertically aligned includes making certain that, as content standards move from the lowest grade level to highest, several outcomes result:
•
Levels of cognitive demand increase.
•
Levels of content, skills, and processes increase.
•
Content and skills appear in the standards for the first time when they are to be mastered.
•
Content and skills fade from the standards in grade levels beyond those at which they are to be mastered.
•
Identical content and skills are not repeated in the standards after they are to be mastered.
Typically, alignment evaluators assess these vertical relationships of content standards by determining categorical concurrence, depth of knowledge, range of knowledge, and balance of representation across grade levels. This methodology offers promise as a first step in the revision of standards to improve their usefulness for both assessment design and instructional guidance.
Limiting Repetition within Standards Documents . Curriculum documents and instructional materials often contain repetitions, because developers want to ensure teachers lay the
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB instructional groundwork for later mastery and provide review for students who did not master content and skills on time. These repetitions can greatly increase the number of standards at each grade level and create ambiguity about when mastery of content and skills is intended to occur.
Repetition also confounds standards-based assessment development by increasing to an unrealistic quantity the number of items required to attain alignment with the standards.
One reason for large numbers of content standards is related to a tendency for content standards to have too many concepts at too fine a “grain size.” There is a temptation to include in such sets of standards every concept, idea, and fact that every member of the state committees that develop them feels is important. Thus, the standards document becomes a wish list. This type of standards document is unwieldy for educators who have to provide the instruction so that students accomplish all of these skills. When educators, for example, at the elementary level, face the task of addressing content standards in multiple content areas, they quickly see the impossibility of addressing multiple wish list sets of standards within the school year. Yet, to fail to do so may mean that students have not been taught some of the concepts that will be assessed. Low performance by some students drives educators to try to cover more content, which is a frustrating, never ending battle with the clock. Including the many items from the wish list is unreasonable, given these time limits and the reality that it is impossible to cover such a large set of standards. And, all of the content is not equally important. Content standards writers avoid this dilemma by making decisions about what content is important enough to require its inclusion in state level standards documents and, consequently, assessments.
Ensuring Horizontal Alignment of Standards . Problems with horizontal alignment of standards across content areas are another cause for the development of large numbers of standards.
Refining the horizontal alignment of content standards documents helps to assure that the standards are consistent within a grade level. Horizontal alignment involves ensuring the following:
• content and skills are not repeated within the same grade level within a set of content standards
• content and skills are not repeated across content standards for different domains
• different levels of the same content or skills are not represented in the same grade level within a set of content standards
The consequences of having too many standards, whether in one or multiple content areas, are disjointed instruction, attempts to cover the content too rapidly (and thus leaving little time to answer student questions, much less develop students who are thoughtful in their understanding and use of the course content), and students who may have factual knowledge but who are unable to use or apply what they have learned. Sets of standards that contain large numbers of standards will encourage superficial learning, not the deep understanding of the content area many educators believe is most important.
Focusing on the Big Ideas . What is needed is to create sets of academic content standards focused on the key concepts and ideas for the content area suitable for the grade level. Sometimes called the “big ideas,” these key concepts can guide instruction that is deep and meaningful, helping students to understand the concepts, not just memorize facts (which may be quickly forgotten).
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
Popham (2003) has written about “whittling down wish-list sets of standards” to a more realistic level. A 2005 publication of the National Research Council, Board of Testing and Assessment, reinforces this notion of creating standards that focus on the big ideas, with learning progressions that demonstrate the connections of key concepts for students that become more sophisticated and varied as students progress through the grades. Instruction in a unit on cells or energy can start in kindergarten and progress through high school. Focusing teaching on a smaller number of skills more thoroughly allows students to understand (and use) more of the content area.
A criticism of this approach is that it narrows the curriculum and reduces instruction to that which can easily be tested in a large-scale assessment program. This could happen if the key concepts selected are not the most essential big ideas in the content area. However, if these are selected with care, students may have a more thorough understanding of the content area, as well as become better prepared to continue their learning in the area. Certainly, local districts or individual teachers can choose to go beyond these units of study, to focus on additional key ideas. Districts might choose to elaborate on state standards through local curriculum for several reasons:
• to teach content in greater depth
• to add standards they think are important that are not included in the state standards
• to emphasize different aspects of the standards that the state would find difficult to assess such as attitudes and certain kinds of thinking strategies
The development of a local curriculum that focuses on the content standards can also provide guidance for the implementation not only of the content standards but also for the provision of rich curricula, including when to introduce content and skills that will be mastered at later grade levels and provision of review when students have not mastered content and skills intended to be mastered at earlier grade levels. Because curricula are intended to address what teachers teach and content standards are intended to address what students achieve, these documents serve complementary and essential roles for the totally aligned system.
Developers of academic content standards also need to consider the consistency of the standards sets across content areas. Because standards documents are used by local educators and others, a lack of consistency in their content, format, and grain size may make it challenging or even impossible for them to be used by classroom teachers. Thus, as the sets of standards are being created, a consistent level of granularity, format, and organization is needed to maximize the utility of the standards. This consistency will help in both curriculum and assessment development.
Using Precise Language . Finally, developers of standards should consider carefully the precision of the language used in the standards documents. Big ideas should not be written as vague ideas. Each key concept needs to be addressed comprehensively and should be clearly described with illustrative materials if necessary. To increase precision of language in the content standards themselves, the state might ensure the following:
•
Standards language is easy to visualize as student performance.
•
Standards language precisely describes the content and skills to be demonstrated in the culminating achievement contained in the standard.
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
•
The difference in standards from grade to grade relies upon differences in content and skills to be mastered, not merely different levels in cognitive complexity implied by using different verbs.
•
Standards merge content and skills to be performed together into single expectation statements, rather than splintering them across several standards.
In addition, terminology used to describe the levels contained within sets of standards (e.g.,
“standard,” “benchmark,” or “grade level expectation”) should be used in the same manner in the standards documents across content areas. Using the same term in different ways, or using different terms for the same thing should be avoided.
Decisions that Improve Standards Documents
Ultimately, the following decisions about the standards document need to be made:
•
Content area(s) in which standards and benchmarks are to be created. The developer of the content standards document will need to determine for which content areas the standards are to be created.
•
Role of the standards and assessment system. The sponsoring agency will need to determine the purposes for the standard and assessment system. Will the system be used simply to comply with federal law, or will it serve to certify students’ completion of high school, readiness for promotion, or satisfactory completion of one or more levels of schooling? Will the results be used to accredit schools, sanction poorly performing ones, or hold educators accountable for the performance of students? These or other purposes for creating the standards and assessment system should be carefully defined at the outset of the creation of the system.
•
Organization of the standards and benchmarks—by grade range, grade level, or course? The standards developer (or sponsoring agency) will need to determine how the standards document is to be organized. While measurable skills are needed at grades 3–8 for NCLB purposes, this does not necessarily mean that the academic content standards need to be organized in this manner. It may be more effective to establish standards that cut across multiple grade levels, with grade level-specific benchmarks. In other cases, the sponsoring agency may need to create course-specific expectations or standards. The purpose or use of the set of standards may help to determine how the standards are organized.
•
Grade level(s) for the standards document. The sponsoring agency will also need to determine for which grade levels or courses the standards will be developed.
•
Level of specificity of the standards and benchmarks. The level of specificity to be used to create the standards will help determine the number of standards and benchmarks to be created. The more “fine grained” the level of the standards, the more numerous they may be.
Sets of standards that contain many standards (or benchmarks) may make it more
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB challenging to build assessments that are well aligned with the standards and benchmarks.
This is especially true for assessment systems at the state level. However, if the assessments are used locally as part of an on-going, classroom-based assessment system used in conjunction with ongoing instruction, a set of more numerous standards may be quite appropriate and feasible when spread over several months. These documents are actually designed to be proxies for local curricula.
•
Number of standards and benchmarks. The sponsoring agency will need to determine the intended number of standards and benchmarks. As mentioned above, the level of specificity may affect this decision. The smaller number of standards or benchmarks assessed, the greater the probability that the assessment based on the standards and benchmarks will be aligned with the set of standards. However, as described above, the intended uses of the standards and benchmarks must weigh heavily on the decision as to the number of standards and benchmarks. Standards developed for state-level use should be lesser in number than those created to guide daily instruction.
•
Similar or different standards and benchmarks (or some combination) across grade levels.
The agency creating the standards will need to determine whether the same standards are used across all grade levels, or whether different ones would be used at each grade level or range of grades. Decisions might be made differently for different content areas. For example, the English language arts standards (and benchmarks) might be the same across grade levels, while the academic content standards in mathematics might be different at each grade. The rationale from making different decisions for different content areas should be carefully considered, because this decision will have an impact on the number and level of specificity of the standards and benchmarks, the clarity of expectations for users, and consequences for aligning assessments with the standards.
When these decisions are made in conjunction with the assessments to be used in the standards and assessment system, the system is more likely to be aligned without unnecessary addition of assessment items to assure adequate alignment.
Of course, the nature of the assessments used and whether these are used at the state or local levels also bears on this issue, as discussed in the next section.
The previous section discussed the role of content standards in an aligned statewide assessment system. The concept of alignment requires that the assessments developed to measure student attainment of these standards reflect the full breadth and depth intended by the standards.
Experienced assessment developers and consumers recognize that no one test can meet all the needs of parties across the educational spectrum, from teachers, principals, district administrators, policymakers at the state level, and parents. Such uses range from instructional support and formative assessment at the classroom level, up to accountability to meet state and federal expectations. In this section we describe a set of principles that a state might use to drive the
13

Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB development of a coherently
1
aligned assessment system. We then describe the specific components
2
of such a system. Wherever, possible we include issues faced and examples from current programs to illustrate the point being made.
How does a state develop assessments to meet these different needs? Key to a successful response is adherence to the following principles:
•
No one test can meet all the purposes driving the development of the content standards.
An assessment designed to directly drive instruction for a specific student at the classroom level will look very different than one developed for statewide accountability purposes. Trying to do both with one instrument will compromise the information for both purposes and likely fail. States attempting to use their assessments for both accountability and diagnostic purposes are requiring as many as 3-4 testing sessions per content area and as much as 4-5 hours of testing time. This has raised concerns at the local level about too much state intrusion on instruction time.
•
Coherency is best accomplished by thinking of a statewide testing system.
Rather than developing tests as needs arise, policymakers should envision a prioritized system of assessments targeted to important needs as the content standards are being developed, recognizing that assessment time and resources are both a valuable and limited commodity.
Assessments should be included to the extent they both align with the state content standards and measure different aspects (breadth and depth) of these standards. Many states designate content to be assessed at the state level and other content left for local attention.
•
Proper development of content standards is essential to a coherent statewide testing system.
The previous section described a series of decision points of which states must be aware when developing their content standards. Consensus on the number of standards to be assessed, grain size inherent in these standards, and differentiation between essential and desirable content is crucial for the development of effective, valued assessments. In addition, states should differentiate between content to be tested at the state level and material best left for local assessments. From a testing perspective, factors driving the distinction between state and local content include appropriateness of certain types of standards for a high-stakes accountability assessment (e.g., analyses of controversial topics); difficulty measuring certain temperaments (e.g., enjoyment of reading) or skills (e.g., read-aloud skills) in a group administered, on-demand setting; and depth of desired assessments (e.g., assessments at the standard level for accountability vs. indicator level for individualized instructional planning). States are beginning to transfer the concept of “grain size” from standard development to assessment development in order to implement the most powerful tests possible.
1
For the purposes of this paper, “coherency” is defined as a system of assessments aligned with the state content standards, produces results for a range of prescribed purposes (e.g., accountability, diagnosis, instructional support), and
2 accomplishes this in an efficient, cost-effective manner.
Because not all examples are positive in their adherence to the principles of coherency/alignment, the authors will not mention specific states or assessment programs by name.
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
•
Test development should directly follow the intended use of the resulting data and information derived from the assessment.
Different types of assessments are differentially suited for specific purposes. Broad accountability needs can be met reasonably well with relatively short assessments comprised of mostly multiple-choice items enhanced with carefully selected constructed response prompts. Diagnostic assessments designed to drive instruction require deeper information at the indicator level. States must be careful to resist pressures to use their assessments for dual purposes such as high school graduation and college entrance unless they are willing to expand the length and scope of their standards and assessments.
•
Both state and local educators have distinct roles in a coherent statewide testing system.
While all parties share the same goal—ensuring all students meet the challenges of the content standards—the specific roles and responsibilities differ depending where one sits in the educational delivery system. State officials are primarily responsible in the testing arena to develop and administer accountability tests —those designed to ensure at a broad level that the content included in the state standards is being taught to and achieved by all students. Local administrators need to administer the state’s tests with fidelity and use the information derived from them to improve instruction at the school and classroom level.
Teachers must use information from a variety of sources—including state and local assessments—to address the needs of each child in the classroom. All parties need to possess the assessment literacy commensurate with their responsibilities and provide the necessary resources and support materials to ensure success of the goal. Finally, all parties need to be aware of the expectations inherent in the state content standards and the role that each component of the statewide assessment program plays in measuring student achievement of different aspects of these standards. Some states are beginning to develop and identify models, items, tasks, and software packages to assist local assessment development, implementation, and tracking.
Following these principles will result in a series of assessments that is efficient and cost effective, as well as providing information for specific purposes in a timely manner to the parties that need it most. It will also ensure the entire breadth and depth of the state content standards are assessed in the manner with the greatest fidelity to the knowledge and skills required to master each.
Components of a Coherent Statewide Assessment System
There is no limit to the types of assessments confronting students throughout the course of their educational experience. A typical high school student in some states may in a single year be subjected to the following:
• statewide standards-based criterion-referenced assessments
• state end-of-course examinations
• norm referenced tests mandated either by the state or district
• college entrance exams such as the SAT or ACT
• district-developed assessments
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
• course-specific final exams and midterms administered either school-wide or by individual teachers
• teacher-developed unit tests, weekly tests, and quizzes
While there is no shortage of assessments, coherency across this hodgepodge is a much rarer phenomenon. A key aspect of a content-standard driven coherent assessment system is the efficient use of resources, one of the most important being testing time. Therefore, we will discuss below only those components essential to a statewide system
3
:
• statewide accountability assessment
• course-specific assessment
• sample item/task development
• formative (classroom) assessment
The assessment components described in this paper reflect a model program; many states may choose to select only some features because of fiscal and time constraints. Additionally, these components can best be accomplished through a strong state/local partnership, with each level performing tasks for which they are best suited. (These roles are delineated throughout the paper.)
Finally, some of the components are not required for NCLB accountability purposes. States may choose to use them only for state and local purposes.
Statewide Accountability Assessment
The primary component of state assessment programs can be broadly classified as standardsbased core knowledge assessments administered annually to all
4
students in a given grade. Such census tests—most often CRTs but also augmented NRTs—are designed to measure, in a broad and efficient manner, whether students have met the expectations inherent in a given grade’s content standards for either federally (i.e., NCLB) or state-mandated subject areas. Building off the concepts in the first section, these types of tests are most successful when they are based only on a limited number of “large grain, big idea” standards.
Typically ranging from 40–70 multiple-choice items with a number of constructed response tasks, such tests are best used to answer the following question: How many students in a school/district/state have met the grade-level expectations in a given content area? Accordingly, these tests serve primarily an accountability function. Very few states can validly claim that their broad accountability assessments can also serve diagnostic purposes.
5
However, if a state were to
3
The model described in this section should not be viewed as the only acceptable approach from either a technical or legal perspective. It is included because it is both coherent (i.e., contains all essential elements in a non-duplicative manner) and efficient. States may choose different models as long as they contain the basic elements described in this section. In some cases, states may choose to exclude certain components due to limited funds, existing local efforts, or
4 laws limiting the size and scope of the statewide assessment program.
A limited number of special education students and English language learners may be assessed with alternate
5 performance standards. Later in this section we discuss standards-based assessment approaches for these populations.
Unless states are willing to spend as much as three to four class periods for each separate content area and administer as many as 100 items per subject, it is doubtful that highly useful individualized diagnostic information can be
16

Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB develop an assessment system based on the four components described in this section, both valid accountability and diagnostic information can be obtained. Options exist for some of these assessments to be developed at the district/school level, increasing local buy-in and decreasing costs at the state level (see section titled Formative Assessments below).
States must decide from the outset the range of stakes for their accountability assessment program. Will results count as a gatekeeper to promotion at the elementary and middle school levels or a graduation barrier in high school? How will schools be judged based on the performance of their students, both under federal NCLB requirements and additional state accountability expectations? And, as states increasingly explore growth and value-added accountability methodologies, will direct attributions of responsibility, both positive and negative (along with rewards and sanctions), be made for teachers, principals, and district administrators, along with their students?
Stakes of Assessments . Understanding the stakes associated with the assessments from the beginning is crucial for several reasons. High stakes decisions require more technically defensible test results, which might limit the types of items and item formats included. Thus, this may impact how well assessment items and tasks can measure the full intent of the content standards. States must also ensure that the structure and quality of their content standards can withstand the scrutiny associated with rewards and sanctions at the student, school, or educator level. The greater the stakes, the more support needs to be provided to local educators. Typically, states include combinations of paper/web-based materials with differing degrees of direct training to teachers, curriculum coordinators, assessment directors, and the general public on the content being tested and performance of students on the assessment. Finally, the stakes associated with an assessment may affect the passing score and other achievement categories (e.g., basic, advanced) because impact data become especially relevant if high-stakes consequences are attached to student performance.
Assessment of Special Populations . Increasingly, states are beginning to address the needs of special student populations in both the development of their content standards and as part of their statewide accountability testing programs. Such groups include special education (SE) students and
English language learners (ELLs). States must ensure the standards driving these special population assessments are appropriate for these populations, linked to the general education content standards, and represent types and levels of performance consistent with high academic expectations. groups:
Three basic strategies are followed to address the needs of these traditionally under-served
•
Universal Design .
In order to increase the accessibility and validity of assessments, test designers are attempting to take advantage of the growing body of research focusing on implementation of Universal Design principles. Such factors as language choice, page attainable from this form of assessment. While sufficient attention to grain size has promise, few states have been able to limit the breadth of content across their content standards to the degree necessary to satisfy the requirements for classroom teachers to design for each student an individualized course of study.
17

Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB layout, and reprioritization of standards hold promise in closing the empirical achievement gap for a variety of at-risk student populations.
•
Alternate Assessments .
NCLB and IDEA requirements have led to a burgeoning number and type of alternate assessments being developed to measure the achievement of the most significantly cognitively disabled student populations. States use a variety of assessment formats including state-developed test prompts, some with flexibility for local augmentation up through full portfolio systems. Changes in NCLB regulations increasing the percentage of SE students who may be assessed on alternative standards, including so called “gap” students, increase the challenge for coherent statewide assessment systems. For example, many states are considering whether gap student assessments should more closely resemble their alternate assessments designed for the most significantly cognitively disabled or be aligned more directly with the statewide accountability tests built for the general student population
6
. States need to understand these issues while standards for these student populations are being developed and transfer these decisions into the assessment development process.
•
English-language Proficiency Assessment .
States are using two strategies to obtain assessments to measure the English proficiency of their ELL student population. Some states such as California and Massachusetts have chosen to develop their own set of tests.
Others have joined one of a number of state/contractor consortia designed to efficiently meet federal Title III requirements and the distinct needs of these students. States going alone must be certain their standards for ELL students are sufficiently developed to support a high-stakes assessment. They must also study the relationship of these standards with the expectations of the subject specific content standards (primarily but not limited to those for
ELA) to ensure students who exit from ELL programs have sufficient language skills to meet the expectations in the various academic content areas. States taking the consortia route must carefully measure the alignment between these partially-tailored assessments and their state-developed content and performance standards. In some cases, significant augmentation to consortia-developed assessments may be required to obtain sufficient alignment.
Assessment and Alignment . The primary tool states are using to determine the quality of their standards and as a guide to assessment development is to perform or contract for alignment studies. NCLB expects that such studies will be performed by qualified groups independent of the state or its test development contractor. When considering such a study, states should be aware of the variety of models available, the rules for determining whether alignment is present, external referents to compare standards and assessments (e.g., NCTM standards, NAEP), standards of adequate vs. inadequate alignment, and whether they will have a chance to respond to draft reports before they are finalized and made public. States must also begin the process of performing alignment studies for standards and assessments designed for their SE and ELL populations, recognizing that much less research and experience exists on alignment models and procedures for these populations.
6
Guidance for the assessment and accountability of this additional “2 percent” population is expected to be released shortly.
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
States must carefully examine the assumptions and procedures of the alignment approach they choose from the range that is available (e.g., Webb, Porter, Ananda, ACHIEVE). Several key questions should be asked:
•
Are the assumptions of the proposed alignment model consistent with those underlying standards and assessment development in the state (e.g., alignment should be at the indicator level, not the standard level; the test blueprint need not be met exactly each year and may permit prescribed annual variations)?
•
Are the aligners expert in the specific content areas and familiar with the standards and assessment development process?
•
Will the state get to review and comment on findings before they are released?
Many states are finding less than complete alignment of the CRT programs with state standards and the test blueprint, somewhat surprising given that these tests are developed explicitly to maximize this relationship. Many states using augmented NRTs for philosophical or cost reasons are discovering incomplete alignment for some content strands or within specific grade levels.
Often, the most important determinant of degree of alignment is at what level of detail the process occurs (e.g., strand, standard, indicator).
In considering the relationship between standards and assessments, states must also focus on the concepts of vertical and horizontal alignment. Vertical alignment may take two forms: judgmental and statistical. With respect to vertical alignment, most states build their standards based on expert judgments of how much content is appropriate to teach and assess in a given year and how this decision in a given grade influences the content in adjacent grades. An increasing number of states additionally want to be able to place adjacent grades scores on the same scale to allow a variety of comparisons reflective of the concept of a “year’s growth.” All states should pay considerable attention to ensure year-to-year content and assessment expectation are coherent and reasonable. Whether they should take the next step and build these expectations into the score scale they adopt requires a deep examination of the dimensionality of a given content area (e.g., How does the construct of reading or mathematics change from grades 3–8?) and the technical characteristics of the derived scale scores (e.g., Do derived scores have sufficient variance and reliability within and across grades to support the vertical alignment?).
More recently, some states are beginning to examine the horizontal alignment of their standards and assessments across content areas. Several key questions are important:
•
Are the grade-by-grade expectations consistent across content areas (i.e., Do the content standards in a given grade reflect comparable expectations)?
•
Are passing rates consistent across content areas in a given grade?
•
Do empirical differences across content areas reflect differences in content expectations, differences in assessment design/implementation, or true levels of achievement?
Ultimately, the success of statewide accountability assessments relies on the quality and public acceptance of the content standards on which they are based. Issues such as the amount of
19

Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB time devoted to state assessments, costs of developing tailored CRTs vs. purchasing and augmenting an off-the-shelf NRT, and the value of the results of these tests for instructional and accountability purposes are always under debate. Carefully developed content standards used to drive a coherent statewide assessment system go a long way towards focusing these debates on how best to improve the system, not on the value and validity of the system itself.
Course-Specific Assessment
Statewide accountability assessments serve an important but relatively limited assessment and accountability function—to measure student achievement of important grade-by-grade building block skills. Such assessments, due to the wide range of content included even in well-developed state standards and the limited time available for testing, are necessarily broader than they are deep.
Therefore, there is an important role in a coherent statewide assessment system for carefully selected instances of in-depth testing of course-specific content. The most prevalent example of this mode of assessment is end-of-course testing at the secondary level. Rather than focusing on a range of knowledge and skills tracked year by year, in-depth course-specific assessments focus on deeper levels of subject-specific and procedural knowledge. Taken together, statewide accountability testing and course specific assessments draw a more complete picture of student achievement across the breadth and depth of the state’s content standards, often allowing reliable information to be provided both at the broad standard level and at the more in-depth indicator level.
States must address several issues as they attempt to develop these types of assessments. The first decision is which courses warrant this investment in assessment time and resources. The following factors should drive this process. First, which of the state’s content standards are sufficiently developed and detailed to support an in-depth assessment? Next, states should pick subject areas representing key knowledge correlated with success in and beyond school (e.g., algebra). In order to maximize its investment, courses with high enrollment or where enrollments are related to key state initiatives should be favored. The state must be ready to deal with the reaction of teachers and advocates for courses not selected for assessment development. Finally, states need to determine if and how they will include course-specific assessments into NCLB and state accountability systems.
The next set of issues revolves around item content and formats. Ideally, these assessments should allow a wider range of item types directly linked to important features of the content domain and state standards. For example, science end-of-course exams should include lab exercises as appropriate and feasible. Math tests might require examples of active problem solving and proofs.
Social science assessments could involve the development of charts and graphs and extensive review of primary-source documents. The assessment context should be explored to include more than on-demand administrations. Students could do outside research, both individually and collaboratively, and report findings in a variety of formats.
The more subject-specific assessments differ from their on-demand statewide accountability counterparts, the more challenging it will be to include their results in formal accountability systems. States might be willing to sacrifice some degree of uniformity and reliability for increased
20

Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB content and consequential validity, as well as higher degrees of teacher support and buy-in. States may also, particularly in the early years, provide accountability “points” for participation rates, in addition to student performance. This will reward lower-performing schools that encourage students to enroll in those courses with end-of-course exams. Participation rates and maximum effort will also increase if state and local policies require or encourage schools to include the results of these assessments in students’ course grades. Procedures to assist local scoring need to be developed and auditing procedures to monitor the integrity of these local activities need to be instituted, especially if results are used for accountability purposes. States employ different auditing models. Some sample from each school and modify local scores if any discrepancy exists between school and state scorers. Others require a discrepancy threshold be crossed (e.g., average difference +/- 5 points) before any modifications are made to the original rating.
Sample Item/Task Development
Given the limits to the information teachers can reasonably expect from statewide accountability assessments, states are searching for ways to increase the availability of valid, quality test items to support instructional and test preparation activities at the school and classroom level.
Even states that routinely or periodically release intact test forms find themselves in need of additional items to meet local demand. Sample items and tasks can serve several important (and a few inappropriate) purposes. For example, sample items that fully express the breadth and depth of the state content standards are a powerful driver of classroom instruction. Experience in several states suggests that teachers rely on sample items to fully understand the intent of the standards, particularly the range of expectations and required depths of knowledge. Schools may also use these items for diagnostic/predictive purposes and to make students aware of what they will experience when confronted with the state’s statewide accountability assessment. Some states are also discovering that availability of sample items decreases the pressure to release live test forms, allowing the state to maintain its best items in the live test pool.
However, states must be careful not to encourage or support the use of sample items as a replacement for actually teaching the content. Too many schools overuse test preparation activities to the detriment of more appropriate and effective instructional activities.
As with all the other components of a coherent statewide assessment system, sample items and tasks should reflect the full range (breadth and depth) of the state content standards. The samples should both duplicate the content of the statewide accountability assessments as well as provide more complex examples that represent applications and extensions of the grade-level content expectations.
Several approaches are available to increase the bank of quality, content valid, sample items and tasks directly aligned with the state’s content standards. The three listed below need not be mutually exclusive:
•
Contractor developed .
States can build into their testing contracts the development of additional items beyond those needed to build test forms. Such items can either be produced
21

Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB as part of the procedures followed for those to be used on the actual test or developed separately by the contractor. Either way, the items should undergo a review process consistent with—although not necessarily as rigorous as—the one used for live test items.
The advantages of this approach are the greater assurance of alignment to the content standards and parallel format as well as the feel to actual test items.
•
Commercial products . Several item banks are commercially available, many of which contain so-called alignment data to state content standards. States must be skeptical of the integrity of this alignment information, especially if the study was not performed external to the vendor. Several items banks are now being linked to powerful software platforms that possess various form and report production options. As with the stand-alone item banks, states must ensure the quality of the items meets technical standards and that the items truly reflect the intent of the state content standards.
•
Clearinghouse .
A promising third option is beginning to be considered in some states as a means of increasing the number of sample items while simultaneously empowering teachers to learn about the state’s content standards, assessment expectations, and features of effective items. Using web-based support features, teachers (and others) across the state, following a short tutorial, are invited to submit sample items. Such items need to be reviewed for quality and alignment. Candidates to perform this quality-control role include
SEA content staff, the test development contractor, and teacher review committees, particularly those already involved in item development and review.
States may also use any of the three approaches described above to develop a wide range of items and tasks to support classroom-based formative assessments. This final component of the coherent statewide assessment system is described next.
Formative (Classroom) Assessments
Classroom-based formative assessments represent the final component of a coherent statewide assessment system. The role of these locally developed and administered assessments is not to duplicate the state’s efforts but instead to encourage types of assessments important for the measurement of the full intent of the content standards yet not feasible at the state level. (The availability of state-supported sample item banks is intended in part to encourage this creativity rather than for schools to simply create local clones of the state tests.) As with all components described in this section, formative assessments must align directly with the state content standards.
In this case, they may also reflect prerequisite knowledge for student mastery of the grade-level content expectations as well as deeper, more complex aspects of these standards than is included on the statewide accountability assessments.
Results of state assessments serve primarily as identifiers of general strengths and weaknesses for students and schools, pointing out performances warranting more in-depth attention.
In addition, there is additional content, either not included in prioritized state standards, or covered more broadly than desired. This leaves an important and distinct role for formative assessments:
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
• providing instructionally sensitive information to support the efforts of classroom teachers in preparing students for the full range of the state content standards
• assessing content important to the local community either in a different format than that found on the state test or excluded from the state test due to limits in time, resources, or vision.
As detailed by Rabinowitz and Ananda (2001),
Local assessment programs have greater potential for generating this kind of complex information largely because they are not bound by the same constraints as state-level programs. As a result, they can more realistically incorporate innovative assessment methods, such as portfolios and performance events, which are able to generate more specific information about the strengths and weaknesses of individual students (p. 2).
Districts must ensure sufficient time and resources are provided to support local assessment development and implementation. Necessary expertise for planning and technical support must either be available locally or contracted. Consortia of like-minded districts can be formed for greater efficiency and capacity.
Rabinowitz and Ananda describe the process by which valid and valued local assessments can be developed. Formative assessments ideally share key attributes including direct links to both state and local content standards. They provide information valued across the spectrum of local constituents (e.g., teachers, students, administrators, parents, the general public), and directly support teaching and learning. They supply information in a timely manner and in a format directly transferable to the needs of teachers and administrators. Parents and the greater community learn the value of the information provided by these assessments vis-à-vis information available from the state-developed tests and sample items. All parties recognize the role of the various components of the coherent statewide system and the incremental validity of each in measuring the achievement of all students relative to the full range (breadth and depth) of the state content standards and the effectiveness of school and district instructional services and programs.
In the previous sections, the history of standard development, how they are used, and the typical formats in which they are developed were discussed. Refining and updating academic content standards is necessary for a variety of purposes. The challenge for states is developing a coherent standards-based system in which content standards, achievement standards (i.e., levels, descriptors, cutscores, and exemplars), and the comprehensive assessment system (i.e., state, local, and classroom) are fully aligned. This paper has presented key considerations for states attempting to improve their system alignment, particularly among these elements. Because all states were required to develop standards previously to comply with federal requirements, most states are now updating or revising their standards based upon several years of experience. Since standards, in most cases, were initially developed in isolation from assessments, how can this process be
23

Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB designed to foster greater alignment between standards and assessments in the future? What are the lessons that have been learned now that states have to demonstrate vigorous alignment between their standards and assessments? When updating or revising academic content standards, vigilance is necessary to ensure standards are articulated so that alignment of the assessments meets the rigorous criteria required by NCLB.
Guidelines for Facilitating the Process
The following guidelines are suggested to facilitate that process:
Vision . A state’s vision regarding its assessment system needs to be developed, committed to paper, and adopted so all participants can see the path that will be taken. This vision provides the guidance necessary to develop and maintain a coherent and well-organized, statewide assessment system. This step is often overlooked but is a critical step to help ensure alignment between the standards documents and the assessment system.
Purpose . As part of the revision of standards documents, the purpose needs to be reiterated to those individuals working on the revisions to the standards and to all stakeholders. An explanation of why changes may be necessary should be communicated to all stakeholders that include the relationship the standards have to curriculum, assessment, and instruction in a standardsbased system (Popham, 2005, p. 41). When revising or updating standards, participants need to be informed about what problems have arisen related to the organization of existing standards for use in their revision efforts.
Development . Every effort should be made to ensure that the committees fully understand the issue of rigor, or depth verses breadth of standards. A state cannot assess everything that could be taught, but instead might choose to assess big ideas represented by the standards, those that are deemed so important that each student needs to know that information or be able to perform that skill proficiently. A lesson learned over the years since the enactment of IASA and the implementation of the NCLB Act is the need for state standards to focus on the big ideas while local curricula may incorporate much more.
Selecting Members of Standards Revision Committees . A process to select members of the standards revisions committees needs to be articulated ensuring individuals with strong content knowledge and assessment literacy skills are selected and special populations are adequately represented. New faces and ideas need to be added to the mix rather than relying on the same small core of bright, hardworking educators for almost everything. Also, there should be strong consideration given to including those new to the profession as well as those having diverse points of view. State departments of education need to ensure that a strong and diverse group of educators are selected and brought together for this purpose. Content specialists are passionate about their subjects and are at risk of producing an overwhelming number of curricular aims whose sheer number makes it impossible to cover within the prescribed time for teaching that subject within a year. The participation of assessment specialists on committees has proven successful in moderating the number of academic content standards produced. The result is a standards document that focuses
24

Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB on the most significant knowledge and skills with consideration to knowledge and learning behaviors that can be assessed. All members should receive training even though they might have participated in the development of the previous standards. Providing the same training to all members so that all participants have the same information from which to start work will minimize problems arising from differing understandings of the task. In doing this, widespread buy-in from the state’s educators is more easily attained.
Time Requirement . Sufficient time needs to be allowed to provide the requisite training for the participants to deliberate purposefully and have adequate time to think about the implications of the revisions. In most instances, the revision process should be completed during a single school year. The big ideas to be tested need to be backwards mapped to ensure adequacy of coverage in the standards. Consistency of grain size within the content area and across content areas is of great importance, and vertical and horizontal alignment needs to be ensured. A timetable for development should also be established and followed. Decisions regarding whether alignment is strong need to be made prior to beginning the next steps.
Assessment Descriptors and Standards . Achievement descriptions are the bridge between the standards and the assessment. They provide the classroom teacher and building administrator with sufficient knowledge of the information that will be included on the state assessment to take the guesswork out of preparing one’s students for the assessment. Educators can ensure throughout the year that their students are progressing toward proficiency in the standards. Instead of classroom teachers receiving a copy of all the standards in all content areas and told to ensure that the students know that information at the proficient level, teachers know what the “big ideas” are and how those big ideas will be assessed.
Coherent Aligned State Standards and Assessment Systems . Coherent systems are founded on the principle that no single test can meet all purposes of the content standards and data resulting from their assessment. To follow the intended use of assessment results, a coherent assessment system consists of several complementary components at the state, local, and classroom levels. Depending on the stakes involved, the needs of the special populations to be assessed, and the alignment constraints accountability assessments may require different configurations from state to state. That configuration will determine the inclusion, design, and implementation of accountability assessments, course-specific or short-cycle assessments, sample items and tasks, and formative assessments.
Formative Assessments . Formative assessments need to include items and tasks that align with a state’s standards. Enabling skills leading to the big ideas or standards can be assessed on an ongoing basis not only to ensure appropriate growth toward the goal, but to provide diagnostic information for students. Formative assessments are not intended to replace a state’s accountability assessment. They are specifically designed for diagnostic use by the classroom teacher in planning instruction and to provide specific information about how students are learning. Many states are currently developing resources for formative assessments as part of their coherent state assessment system. In other instances, districts and schools are using their own formative assessments.
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
Points to Keep in Mind . States must create a vision for a coherent assessment system. They must design it, articulate that vision with others, and plan for it:
•
Develop and articulate a specific purpose for the standards and then remain steadfast to that purpose. Guard against individuals and/or groups with their own agenda changing the course of standards revision. Ensure that the standards include a reasonable number of coherent
“big ideas” that will be assessed for accountability purposes.
•
Develop standards that provide a framework for curriculum and instruction; they should not be the curriculum. Fully developed curricular documents developed around the content standards framework are needed to support day to day teaching of the standards. Guard against including a wish-list of curricular aims in content standards documents.
•
Ensure that while developing the standards and assessments, that each component required by the U.S. Department of Education will meet the rigorous demands of Peer Review of
Standards and Assessments.
•
Update and align academic achievement standards with the academic content standards.
When developing or revising achievement descriptors, keep in mind the assessment, instructional, and reporting uses to be made of these descriptors.
•
Investigate and then articulate state-specific requirements and needs to those involved in the revision and alignment process.
•
Focus on the big ideas, those that each and every student should know and master. Enabling skills are better measured by formative assessments instead of a state accountability assessment.
•
Be purposeful and thoughtful with the development of the standards as they guide not only the assessment, but the development of the alternate and English language learner standards and the associated assessments.
•
Select the committees to revise the academic content standards with care to ensure that members from all appropriate groups are being represented as well as including newer faculty members in the process. Guard against including those who are solely interested in advancing their own curricular agenda.
•
Provide deliberate training for each member of the standards revision committee to ensure that the new purpose and focus is well understood by all. Focusing on a consistent grain size will greatly benefit alignment between content areas as well as with assessment.
•
Provide a detailed timeline that includes sufficient time to develop the revisions, time for participants to reflect and adjust their work, as well as time to share the changes with appropriate stakeholders in a thoughtful way to gain feedback.
•
Perform vertical and horizontal alignment of standards and assessments as well as backward mapping to ensure all underlying knowledge and skills are appropriately provided and assessed.
•
Conceptualize and implement a coherent assessment system that fully aligns with the purposes of the content standards and the uses of assessment results recognizing that no one test can serve all purposes.
•
Plan for and ensure that appropriate, rigorous alignment studies are conducted with sufficient time so that any misalignments or gaps can be remedied before standards and assessment development proceed.
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
A detailed checklist to assist states in addressing these challenges is provided in Appendix
B.
While the revision of standards to ensure alignment with state standards and assessment systems is a tedious and lengthy process, it is ultimately so important that states must constantly be vigilant for ways to improve the alignment of their system. Sufficient thought, clarity, and precision is needed to ensure the development and maintenance of a coherent standards aligned assessment system. Thoughtful and purposeful planning in the revision of academic content and achievement standards will yield positive results when states work to improve the alignment of their assessments with their standards. In this era of high-stakes accountability, states should not lose sight of the tremendous opportunity that exists to strengthen systems for the purpose of building and implementing strong and coherent standards-based systems that will provide needed data to improve schools and ultimately improved student academic performance.
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National
Council on Measurement in Education. (1999).
Standards for educational and psychological testing . Washington, DC: Authors.
Hansche, L. (1998). Handbook for the development of performance standards: Meeting the requirements of Title I.
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education and the Council of
Chief State School Officers.
Mitchell, R. (1996) Front-end alignment: Using standards to steer educational change.
Washington, DC: Education Trust.
Popham, W. J. (2003). Crafting curricular aims for instructionally supportive assessment. Kaui, HI:
The Commission on Instructionally Supportive Assessment.
Popham, W. J. (2005, April/May). “F for assessment.” Edutopia , pp. 38-41.
Rabinowitz, S. N., & Ananda, S. A. (2001) Balancing local assessment with statewide testing:
Building a program that meets student needs . San Francisco: WestEd.
Webb, N. L. (1997). Criteria for alignment of expectations and assessments in mathematics and science education . Council of Chief State School Officers and National Institute for Science
Education Research Monograph No. 6. Madison: University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin
Center for Education Research.
Wilson, M. R., & Bertenthal, M. W. (Eds.). (2005). Systems for state science assessment .
Committee on Test Design for K-12 Science Achievement. Washington, DC: National
Research Council.
Wise, L. L., & Alt, M. (2005). Assessing vertical alignment . Alexandria, VA: Human Resources
Research Organization.
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
Peer Review Questions Pertaining to the Alignment of Standards and Assessments with State
Systems
1.1
(a) Has the State formally approved/adopted, by May 2003, challenging academic content standards in reading/language arts and mathematics that –
• cover each of grades 3-8 and the 10-12 grade range, or
• if the academic content standards relate to grade ranges, include specific content expectations for each grade level?
AND
Are these academic content standards applied to all public schools and students in the State?
1.2
Has the State formally approved/adopted, academic content standards in science for elementary (grades 3-5), middle (grades 6-9), and high school (grades 10-12)? This must be completed by school year 2005-2006.
1.3
Are these academic content standards challenging? Do they contain coherent and rigorous content and encourage the teaching of advanced skills?
1.4
Did the State involve education stakeholders in the development of its academic content standards?
2.5
How has the State ensured alignment between challenging academic content standards and the academic achievement standards?
If the State has adopted alternate achievement standards, how has the State ensured alignment between its academic content standards and the alternate academic achievement standards?
3.4
How has the State ensured that its assessment system will provide coherent information for students across grades and subjects?
(a) Has it indicated the relative contribution of each assessment to ensure alignment to the content standards and determining adequate yearly progress?
(b) Has the State provided a rational and coherent design that identifies the assessments to be used?
3.5
If its assessment system includes various instruments (e.g., the regular assessment in English and either a native-language version or simplified English version of the assessment), how does the State demonstrate comparable results and alignment with the academic content and achievement standards?
4.1
For each assessment, including alternate assessment(s), has the State documented the issue of validity (in
29

Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB addition to the alignment of the assessment with the content standards), as described in the Standards for
Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA/APA/NCME, 1999), with respect to all of the following categories:
(a) Has the State specified the purposes of the assessments, delineating the types of uses and decisions most appropriate to each? and
(b) Has the State ascertained that the assessments, including alternate assessments, are measuring the knowledge and skills described in its academic content standards and not knowledge, skills, or other characteristics that are not specified in the academic content standards or grade level expectations? and
(c) Has the State ascertained that its assessment items are tapping the intended cognitive processes and that the items and tasks are at the appropriate grade level? and
(d) Has the State ascertained that the scoring and reporting structures are consistent with the sub-domain structures of its academic content standards (i.e., are item interrelationships consistent with the framework from which the test arises)? and
(e) Has the State ascertained that test and item scores are related to outside variables as intended (e.g., scores are correlated strongly with relevant measures of academic achievement and are weakly correlated, if at all, with irrelevant characteristics, such as demographics)? and
(f) Has the State ascertained that the decisions based on the results of its assessments are consistent with the purposes for which the assessments were designed? and
(g) Has the State ascertained whether the assessment produces intended and unintended consequences?
5.1
Has the State outlined a coherent approach to ensuring alignment between each of its assessments, including alternate assessment(s), or combination of assessments, and the academic content standards and academic achievement standards the assessment is designed to measure?
5.2
Are the assessments and the standards aligned comprehensively , meaning that the assessments reflect the full range of the State’s academic content standards? Are the assessments as cognitively challenging as the standards? Are the assessments and standards aligned to measure the depth of the standards? Do the standards reflect the degree of cognitive complexity and level of difficulty of the concepts and processes described in the standards?
5.3
Are the assessments and the standards aligned in terms of both content (knowledge) and process (how to do it), as necessary, meaning that the assessments measure what the standards state students should both know and be able to do?
5.4
Do the assessments reflect the same degree and pattern of emphasis as are reflected in the State’s academic content standards?
5.5
Do the assessments yield scores that reflect the full range of achievement implied by the State’s academic achievement standards?
5.6
Assessment results must be expressed in terms of the achievement standards, not just scale scores or percentiles.
5.7
What ongoing procedures does the State use to maintain and improve alignment between the assessment(s) and standards over time?
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
Checklists for Revising Academic Content Standards to Align with State Assessments
The following important questions should be asked by states when revising or updating their academic standards to align with the state assessment. Each of the following categories includes questions that are important to answer.
A. Vision. Without a vision and a cogent plan, an aligned system of standards and assessment is difficult to attain. Answering the following questions will help direct a state to determine if the necessary questions have been adequately answered before moving on to the next step:
1.
What components of an aligned standards and assessment system presently exist?
2.
What is the plan for the future?
3.
What is the vision for the state’s assessments? Perhaps it is the development of the statewide accountability assessment required by the NCLB Act or perhaps it is the development of a comprehensive and coherent assessment system that includes formative and alternative assessments.
4.
How will the various components of the system (the state standards-based assessment, the alternate assessment, the ELL assessment as well as formative assessments) work together?
5.
Who will take the leadership role in implementing that plan?
6.
Are there sufficient resources including financial and personnel to be able to operationalize the vision?
7.
Is there a sufficient budget available so that a coherent assessment system can be fully implemented on a statewide basis?
8.
Are there sufficient personnel resources available to fully implement the vision?
9.
How will the various components, such as the formative assessments, be accessed by the various stakeholders?
10.
Is the delivery mechanism in place and working well?
11.
Is there an infrastructure in place that will help accomplish the vision or does one need to be built?
12.
Is there a multi-year plan for the development, implementation, and continuous improvement of an entire assessment system?
13.
If the “vision” has been developed, has it been written down, well defined, and shared with appropriate stakeholders?
B.
Purpose.
The following questions help clarify why the assessment system is being developed:
1.
What is the general purpose of the academic content standards? a) Are they to determine what will be assessed by the state’s accountability assessment or are they used to guide the development of curriculum at the local level?
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB b) Standards, generally speaking, serve as the framework for curriculum, but they are not the curriculum. Perhaps academic content standards were developed previously with the input of specific groups in a manner that did not clearly differentiate between standards and curriculum. How might that differentiation be made clear in the document or in two separate documents? c) If this was true, now is the time to revisit those decisions. Were the standards originally developed with the knowledge that not everything included was to be tested at the state level? At this important time, redefining the specific purpose for the standards is necessary.
2.
Are there specific requirements that exist to guide the decision regarding the purpose for the development of the standards?
3.
How have the standards been working since their last revision or update or since their last adoption, over about the last three to five years? Are there areas that seem particularly troublesome and others that have worked well?
4.
Have there been suggestions regarding how these standards might be improved? If there have been changes in how standards have been written and formatted over time, are they consistent across content areas?
5.
What changes need to be made in these standards documents to improve their usefulness for the intended purposes?
C.
Selecting Members of Standards Revision Committees. An essential process to consider is the selection and subsequent training of the individuals that will be members of the standards revision committees. Several questions must be asked:
1.
Does the composition of the committee reflect the diversity of the population?
2.
Is the committee balanced in its representation of various stakeholder groups (e.g., teachers, parents, business leaders, principals, university and community college faculty)?
3.
Are assessment experts/specialists present?
4.
Are the committee members knowledgeable of the content domain and student subgroups?
5.
Are the committee members well trained in the task at hand?
D. Training and Development. The development of standards is an extremely important undertaking that provides the foundation for all subsequent work in the development and appropriate use of an assessment system. Time spent training the participants at the beginning of the sessions will provide dividends in the actual product that will be developed. Questions to ask are as follows:
1.
Have the individuals who will participate in the revision of the standards received appropriate and updated training including the specific purpose of the revisions, what level of specificity will be utilized, what grain size will be used, and other similar questions?
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
2.
Do these people know how needs have changed? It will be important for participants to understand why the standards are changing and in response to what new issues and/or needs.
3.
Do the individuals completely understand the state’s entire coherent system of assessments?
4.
Do they know that how the standards are written impacts the development of the alternate and ELL standards and, therefore, the alignment of those standards with the state content standards? While it is important to include a wide variety of stakeholders in the development of academic content standards, a certain level of requisite knowledge regarding standards and assessment is necessary. If participants do not come to the table with this knowledge, the sponsoring agency is responsible for ensuring that appropriate training has been provided prior to beginning this process.
5.
What will the state need to do to ensure sufficient assessment literacy within this group?
The need for a higher level of assessment literacy exists in the participants of these revision committees so that the full scope of need, impact, and outcome is well understood. a) Who will provide trainings and/or updates to participants? b) How will the training be delivered? c) Is there a sufficient budget in order to conduct the trainings?
6.
Do the participants know a sufficient amount of information regarding alignment, both vertical and horizontal?
7.
Has training been developed and implemented to ensure the participants of the revision committees understand the purpose and requirements for the standards?
E. The Standards.
The standards provide the framework for the development of the entire assessment system. The update and revision of the standards should be undertaken with experienced teams leading the way so that outcomes will be useful for the entire process. In revising the standards and evaluating revision efforts, several questions are important to answer:
1.
Are the standards vertically aligned? a) Is there a sequential relationship of the standards from grade to grade? b) Is the scope of the content standards appropriate for the content area by grade? c) Does the process chosen to look at vertical alignment lend itself to completing this important task in such a way that all stakeholders can understand the process and participate in the decisions that will be made?
2. Is the “grain size” of standards consistent across the grade levels and content areas? a) Do the standards capture the big ideas concerning what students should know and be able to do rather than incorporating a daunting list of curricular aims or wish lists? b) Does the number of standards present a problem for adequate coverage in an aligned assessment?
3.
Which individuals will internally check the standards for substance and alignment?
4.
With whom will the state contract for an external and independent alignment review? a) Will the alignment study check for vertical and horizontal alignment?
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB b) Which method will be utilized to secure the information that is required (e.g.,
Webb’s alignment process)? c) Will that entity perform alignment studies for the state standards-based assessment only or also be contracted to perform the alignment studies for the alternate and ELL tests as well? d) What qualifications does the individual performing the alignment study possess that would provide sufficient assurance to the US Department of Education for
Peer Review purposes?
5.
What is the timeline for the internal and external reviews? The development of that timeline, especially when working with outside contractors, is of vital importance.
F. Achievement Descriptors.
Achievement descriptors provide a vision regarding what the student should know and be able to do at each proficiency level. These statements about what a student should “look like” when they are proficient and advanced will help focus a number of important discussions in the future. The achievement descriptors are utilized in a number of important ways in a coherent statewide assessment system. The following set of questions regarding achievement descriptors are important for states to answer when they are updated and aligned with the academic content standards:
1.
Are achievement descriptors revised each time content standards are revised?
2.
Are developers of the achievement descriptors reminded of the assessment, instructional, and reporting uses to be made of the descriptors?
3.
Do the achievement descriptors clarify the big ideas that will be assessed?
4.
Are these statements clearly articulated and sufficiently well written so that all people will be able to understand and use them?
5.
Do the achievement descriptors specify clearly the differences between advanced, proficient, and basic at a minimum?
G. Coherent Aligned State Standards and Assessment Systems. Coherent systems are founded on the principle that no one test can meet all purposes of the content standards and data resulting from their assessment. The configuration of the system will determine the inclusion, design, and implementation of accountability assessments, course-specific or short-cycle assessments, sample items and tasks, and formative assessments. In ensuring an appropriate relationship between standards and assessments in a coherent system, the following questions will be important considerations:
1.
Is the overall configuration of the standards and assessment system designed so that the full breadth and depth of the content standards and data resulting from their assessment are evident? a) Is the accountability assessment aligned with the content standards? b) If course-specific or short-cycle assessments are a part of the system, are they designed to provide a more complete picture of the performance of all students?
Do they warrant the additional investment of time and resources? Do they include a broader range of item types than the accountability assessment? Are they administered for courses that all students are eventually expected to pass?
Are they administered for courses that correlate to success in and beyond school?
34

Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB c) Are sample items and tasks provided as models of technically sound assessment?
Do the items and tasks fully express the breadth and depth of the state content standards? d) Is the use of formative assessment encouraged and supported by the state?
2.
Has vertical alignment been considered both in terms of judgmental and statistical evidence? a) Did evidence include consideration of the expert judgments of how much content is appropriate to teach and assess in a given year and how this decision in a given grade influences the content in adjacent grades? b) Does evidence include the consideration of how the construct of the content domain changes from grade to grade? c) Does the statistical evidence include the consideration of the characteristics of the derived scale scores for sufficient variance and reliability within and across grades to support the vertical alignment (if the state is considering placing adjacent grades’ scores on the same scale to allow a variety of comparisons reflective of the concept of a “year’s growth”).
3.
Are standards and assessments horizontally aligned across content areas? a) Are the grade-by-grade expectations consistent across content areas (i.e., do the content standards in a given grade reflect comparable expectations)? b) Are passing rates consistent across content areas in a given grade? c) Do empirical differences across content areas reflect differences in content expectations, differences in assessment design/implementation, or true levels of achievement?
H. Formative Assessments.
The use of classroom formative assessments to guide instruction is an important component of a coherent assessment system. Some states choose to provide formative assessments to all teachers in all schools while others let districts determine and purchase the formative assessments that will work best for them. Local districts and the schools need to be certain that the implementation of the formative assessments from the state level down to the classroom level is strategically planned and implemented. Teacher preparation programs should encourage the understanding and use of formative assessments so that new teachers can access data regarding student performance on important enabling skills. Some states are developing and implementing a system so teachers can have access to item banks that closely correspond with the standards and the state’s assessment. The development of the delivery infrastructure, as well as training for appropriate classroom teacher use, is vital. Some schools are choosing to utilize the formative assessments as a data point for school improvement purposes. When implementing formative assessments in an aligned comprehensive assessment system, the following questions should be answered to maximize the success of the effort:
1.
Have the classroom teachers been trained on the appropriate use of the assessments and know how to effectively deal with the data provided back to them for each student?
2.
Do the formative assessments provide an administrative overview to monitor the progress of students by classroom so principals and district administrators can monitor the academic growth of classrooms and schools?
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Creating Aligned Standards and Assessment Systems under NCLB
3.
While contractors that develop some formative assessments ensure the assessments are aligned with a state’s standards, independent alignment data should be obtained to ensure this is indeed the case. What individual(s) will perform the alignment studies to determine the formative assessment’s alignment with the state’s standards?
4.
Is a plan in place to have teachers trained on the appropriate use of the formative assessments found within the district?
5.
Is the infrastructure of a formative assessment system built and operational? What steps need to be completed so that teachers and administrators can effectively use the various formative assessments?
The questions that comprise the check list above are by no means comprehensive. States need to look at their particular issues and add, modify, or delete certain questions at various points in time. In order to have a coherent and comprehensive assessment system, a vision is necessary that encompasses all the assessments that will occur within a state’s system.
36