ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a variety of design-based strategies that can help to anticipate (and hopefully counteract) behavioral responses that would distort judgments about teacher or school effectiveness. It begins by focusing on the threats to validity caused by cheating, narrowing the curriculum, and coaching as teacher responses to testing for high-stakes purposes. The form of teaching to the test that Koretz and Hamilton (2006) describe as coaching occurs when teachers place undue emphasis on anticipated test content and item format features for the sole purpose of increasing test performance. Sireci and Soto apply strict criteria from the Standards that would need to hold to justify the use of value-added indicators. Finally, validity theory in general and categories within the Standards in particular can be used to design studies that may support or, alternatively, call into question key assumptions being made about a testing program.
