Research Paper on:
Present Status of Student Performance Assessments

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
on the American educational landscape" (2001, p. 175). Few educators would disagree with these authors. It is not that educators should not be accountable, they should. It is not that  student learning and achievement should not be measured. It should. The problem is the way in which student performance assessment is conducted. The greatest surge in tests and testing  processes always happens when there is an outcry for accountability in our public schools. But, what happens in response is the development of more tests, more assessment processes. Accountability and  student assessment are not new in the field of education; it comes in waves and has done so since the late 1800s (Pearson et al, 2001). The standardized tests that  are used today were initially devised in the 1920s, following along the scientific movement in corporations and in the society (Pearson et al, 2001). Technical advances only made these kinds  of tests easier to administer in groups and less costly forms of assessment (Pearson et al, 2001). At the time, schools began using these large-scale testing instruments for accountability -  and they still do the same thing today (Pearson et al, 2001). Federal involvement in local schools emerged in the 1960s with specific federal education acts, which only supported the  use of standardized testing procedures (Pearson et al, 2001). Regardless of which level of education one is addressing, the need to assessing student learning and performance is a key  issue (Maki, 2001). Student performance assessment is a task that all educational institutions must face and the first thing that needs to be decided is what exactly is to be  measured and what assessment methods or instruments to use (Maki, 2001). There must be a correlation between what is taught and what is measured (Maki, 2001). Otherwise, assessment is an