Adapting Educational Measurement to the Demands of Test-Based Accountability

Abstract

Accountability has become a primary function of large-scale testing in the U.S.The pressure on educators to raise scores is vastly greater than it was several decades ago.Research has shown that high-stakes testing can generate behavioral responses that inflate scores, often severely. I argue that because of these responses, using tests for accountability necessitates major changes in the practices of educational measurement.The needed changes span the entire testing endeavor. This paper addresses implications for design, linking, and validation. It offers suggestions about possible new approaches and calls for research evaluating them.Adapting to accountability 1 Over the past several decades, accountability has become a primary functionarguably, the single most important function-of large-scale educational testing in the U.S. The transition has been gradual, dating back at least to the minimum-competency testing movement of the 1970s, and the nature of the accountability systems and the characteristics of the assessments used for this purpose have varied through several waves of policy initiatives (Koretz & Hamilton, 2006). Nonetheless, the pressure on educators to raise scores has increased markedly from one wave of initiatives to the next.The current situation, in which rewards and sanctions for schools based on scores are ubiquitous and consequential evaluations of teachers based on students' scores are in place or planned in a large number of states, represents a tremendous change from the typical uses of tests 40 years ago.The premise of this paper is that the current uses of tests for accountability require major changes to several aspects of educational measurement. The needed changes span the full sequence of measurement practices, beginning with test design, continuing with the activities needed to maintain testing programs, in particular, linking, and ending with validation.

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