Combining Measurement-Driven Instruction With Authentic Assessment: Some Initial Observations of National Assessment

Recently assessment has been singled out as a key mechanism for monitoring and intervening in the educational process. In particular, claims are being made that new forms of assessment will be able to drive teaching and learning in more positive ways than was originally associated with narrower testing programs. This note reports on initial evidence from the National Assessment in England and Wales and highlights a number of problems in implementing new approaches to assessment in the context of national testing. Traditionally, student examinations of var-ious kinds have developed in fairly ad hoc fashion in response to long-term social as well as educational trends. Recently, however, governments around the world, particularly in the United States and the United King-dom, have become increasingly interested in the quality of schooling and in educational outcome standards. Assessment has been singled out as a key mechanism for monitor-ing and intervening in the educational proc-ess. Thus, attention is now being paid to the role of assessment in the education system as a system, as well as to its implications for individual life chances. In particular, the po-tential impact of new forms of assessment on the quality of teaching and learning has be-gun to attract interest. Key research ques-tions are framed less in terms of the extent to which assessments measure what they pur-port to measure, and more in terms of what impact assessment might have on the instruc-tional process. To some extent, the broader purposes and implications of assessment have always been a matter of concern, but it is only recently that they have received such overt attention from government