ABSTRACT
This chapter explores assessment as an important system-level support, a powerful lever, for changes to instruction. It begins with the essential backstory to assessment plight, highlight perennial tensions of assessment systems and the political activity that determines their fate. The chapter provides the details of several crucial policy turns and offer an overview of the technical features of various approaches to assessment and their implications for learning. It discusses the problematic nature of testing for civil rights work and utilizes the school system there as a case study to illuminate tensions around assessment and cultural difference experienced in both societies. The chapter offers recommendations, based on historical patterns and contemporary research. It deals with the current state of assessment policy in the United States. There is a wide variety of assessment approaches in use in schools. There are on-demand traditional tests, portfolios, extended projects, juried exhibitions, thesis papers, lab reports, math proofs, original art, performances.
