Current Trends in Student Assessments
The passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 that calls for the increase in state tests and school accountability is the culmination of an ongoing trend towards the widespread implementation of standardized testing over the last decade. Even before the implementation of the NCLB act, all 50 states in the U.S. had already launched extensive school reforms that involved the use of various assessments to measure student outcomes in accordance with state-determined standards and content. The central objective of these state initiatives was to determine universal academic standards that could be used to assess students and ensure the accountability of schools (Goertz & Duffy, 2003; Peyser & Costrell, 2004).
In the remainder of this paper, the current trends of student assessment will be examined in greater detail by focusing on the state initiatives and the requirements of the NCLB. Furthermore, the implications of these trends in student assessments will also be discussed.
Prior to the current shift in the emphasis on standardized assessments, student assessments were limited to the wide variety of classroom assessments and tests, which enabled educators to gather valuable information about student learning. Essentially, the objective of the individualized student assessment was to "inform instruction and provide feedback to the learner, thereby enhancing student learning" (Russell, 2003, p. 27). At the same time, educators also relied on the findings of these small-scale assessments to calculate grades and place students in special programs (Goertz & Duffy, 2003).
However, during the 1990s, the trend in student assessment shifted from these small classroom assessments to large-scale state assessments, whose results were used to make decisions about the placements of individual students and ensure the accountability of schools and school districts for student achievemen...