Managing Multiple Measures

When the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 was signed into law in January 2002, it established sweeping requirements related to annual achievement testing for state accountability purposes. Since that time, states have re-evaluated their testing programs, and in some cases expanded them, to ensure they meet the requirements of the law. However, states and school districts use achievement tests for purposes other than accountability (e.g., for instructional or programmatic monitoring) and often supplement the annual accountability assessments required by NCLB with interim tests during the school year to gauge whether they are on track to meet the annual achievement targets required by the law. Consequently, students are more likely than ever before to be assessed multiple times during a school year.

…With increasing variety and frequency of assessments, combined with the inclination to employ a common metric for all assessments of a given construct, it is increasingly routine to have multiple, comparable assessment measures for reading or mathematics available for each student…