NCREL Policy Issues
Issue 15, January 2004
Policy Analysis
2. Assessments of Students' Educational Outcomes
Resources such as the National Research Council report Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational Assessment (Pellegrino, Chudowsky, & Glaser, 2001) provide guidance and examples to states about how technology can aid their processes of assessment. Most states, however, are not exploring diagnostic, formative tools for classroom-based student assessment, and only a few states are using technology to aid in high-stakes testing.
In the North Central region, Indiana has the most thoroughly developed usage of technology for assessment. Indiana's achievement test, the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress Plus (ISTEP+), comes with a host of online aids to help students and teachers. In addition, TestMate Clarity™ software is supplied to each school district (called a school corporation in Indiana) as a part of the ISTEP+ program. Along with the software, school corporations (and nonpublic schools) get the test results for all of their students as electronic files. The software provides tools and reports that allow schools or school corporations to analyze their results as they choose and extract data to move into other databases or tools. States that provide flexibility in the tools and formats associated with data enable local districts to use this information more easily for instructional improvement.
Resource
Indiana's ISTEP+ InfoCenter
doe.state.in.us/istep/
