Abstract
What is the state of assessment in the United States? The answer, as always, depends upon test purposes, specifically who is being tested. The goal of this chapter is to substantially review this question principally for accountability purposes in the pre-collegiate (excluding early childhood) educational level as well as a brief discussion of workforce contexts. In this chapter, we will focus on external rather than teacher-made examinations, and where relevant, we reference pertinent federal policy changes governing or influencing widespread assessment practices. Because of space limitations, we emphasize pre-collegiate assessment. Part of our discussion addresses societal influences and, in particular, new technologies and their benefits. Based on our current work on assessments in technical domains, we will highlight important practices and close with summary thoughts about trends influencing assessment. We will use the terms test, assessment, and exam relatively interchangeably. Throughout the chapter as important subtext, we reflect on the level of evidence routinely provided about examination quality.
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Baker, E.L., O’Neil, H.F. (2020). The Assessment Landscape in the United States: From Then to the Future. In: Harju-Luukkainen, H., McElvany, N., Stang, J. (eds) Monitoring Student Achievement in the 21st Century. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38969-7_5
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