Our Approach

As we hope these presentations reflect, we have endeavored to adopt a "balanced" approach to these controversial and frequently debated issues. This is not an easy task, and we would appreciate your ongoing comments. As we are all aware, testing in our nation's schools is on the increase, as one major result of demands for educational accountability. Such demands have led, for example, to the mandated testing provisions in the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Yet fair and accurate assessment of student learning is highly complex and the issues are by no means settled. Some think that tests point in a strongly positive direction and will spur student achievement. Others may acknowledge unintended negative consequences, but consider such impacts to be somewhat like "side effects" of medicines that need to be tolerated for overall benefits to accrue. For still others, such tests and increasing reliance upon them are not seen as beneficial to learning; opponents of such testing often raise larger questions about our educational priorities and methods. Many educators and researchers who acknowledge the purposes of and need for some large-scale assessment would at the same time caution strongly against the use of such tests by themselves for a high-stakes purpose. They urge that multiple assessment measures be implemented.

As in any major societal discussion, there are many more than two sides to these issues. It is within this multifaceted context that we present this Toolkit, to help provide accurate, balanced, and accessible information about these issues, we evolved seven main messages to serve as the conceptual framework for this effort. Feedback from field tests indicated that most presenters and participants thought the tone was relatively balanced and appropriate for the topics presented.