NATD Survey of Testing Practices and Issues

Why do school districts use Standardized tests? What kinds of testing programs are most common? How much do school testing programs cost? Should publishers coordinate their test standardization efforts?     

Institutional arrangements for evaluation

Summary Evaluations should be independent in terms of being able to arrive at impartial conclusions. They must be seen as being credible if they are to fulfil this function. Their impartiality is derived from using appropriate scientific methodology and by being protected from political interference. Within the government, evaluation offices should be lodged in independent agencies located close to decision makers, but not in the same office as the programme being evaluated. Scientific methods that protect against various forms of bias should be derived with assistance from the professional evaluation community. Original language: English Ernest R. House (United States of America) Professor at the School of Education, University of Colorado, Boulder. His interests are in evaluation and policy. He has been a visiting scholar at UCLA, Harvard and New Mexico, as well as at universities in Australia, Austria, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Recent publications include;Professional evaluation (1993), Schools for sale (1998) andValues in evaluation and social research (with K. Howe). He has been a recipient of the Lasswell Prize (1989) for the article contributing most to the theory and practice of the policy sciences and of the Lazarsfeld Award (1990) for Evaluation and Theory, presented by the American Evaluation Association.