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How Well Aligned Are State Assessments of Student Achievement with State Content Standards?

Item

Title
How Well Aligned Are State Assessments of Student Achievement with State Content Standards?
Abstract/Description
Coherence is the core principle underlying standards-based educational reforms. Assessments aligned with content standards are designed to guide instruction and raise achievement. The authors investigate the coherence of standards-based reform’s key instruments using the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum. Analyzing 138 standards-assessment pairs spread across grades and the three No Child Left Behind tested subjects, the authors find that roughly half of standards content is tested on the corresponding test and roughly half of test content corresponds to the standards. A moderate proportion of test content is at the wrong level of cognitive demand as compared to the corresponding standards, and vice versa. Between 17% and 27% of content on a typical test covers topics not mentioned in the corresponding standards. Policy and research implications are discussed.
Author/creator
Polikoff, Morgan S.
Porter, Andrew C.
Smithson, John
Date
2011
In publication
American Educational Research Journal
Volume
48
Issue
4
Pages
965-995
Resource type
en Research/Scholarly Media
Resource status/form
en Published Text
Scholarship genre
en Empirical
Language
en
Open access/full-text available
en Yes
Peer reviewed
en Yes
ISSN
0002-8312
DOI
10.3102/0002831211410684
URL
Official Publisher's Webpage (SAGE Journals)
Full-text PDF Shared by Author (ResearchGate)
Citation
Polikoff, M. S., Porter, A. C., & Smithson, J. (2011). How Well Aligned Are State Assessments of Student Achievement with State Content Standards? American Educational Research Journal, 48(4), 965–995. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831211410684
Cited in
Coherent Instructional Systems at the School and School System Levels in the United States
Item sets
OB Citations - Coherent Instructional Systems at the School and School System Levels in the United States

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