ABSTRACT
This chapter describes that teachers and learners deserve assessment policies in which those tradeoffs, and the values that inform them, are shifted towards greater teacher control and towards a focus on validity over reliability. Baked into current assessment policies is a burdensome concern for the reliability of test results, rather than their validity. Educators, learners, and the public at large deserve assessment policies focused more on learning than on assigning punishments and rewards. Web-based educational technology is already in use in many districts, including less-affluent ones, that allows teachers to share not just scores but the actual assessments and rubrics with parents. Educational systems divide power between the macro- and micro-level institutional contexts. The macro level refers to districts, states, and the federal government. The micro level consists of teachers, students, and schools. Choices about the professional responsibility and decision-making power held at each level involve tradeoffs with profound implications for classroom practice.
