Together, the words technology and assessment have different meaning for different people. Those who work with educational or instructional technology take these words to mean assessing the impacts of technology on teaching and learning. Test developers and psychometricians, however, consider ways in which computer-based technologies can be used to enhance current approaches to student assessment. This book examines technology and assessment from both perspectives by examining past, current and promising methodologies and applications in both fields. The influences instructional uses of technology and the increasing reliance on testing to gauge student and school performance have on one another are also explored. The book concludes by describing an organizational structure that could bring instructional applications of technology and assessment practices into closer alignment.

The book's goal is to clarify for parents, the public, and policy makers what high stakes tests are and how their use affects our schools, children, and society. It explores the various uses, limitations, and paradoxical consequences of high stakes testing. The present context of testing and the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind make the proposed book timely and important. Current testing programs provide valuable information to teachers, parents, and policy-makers about students, schools, and school systems. But paradoxically, these programs have unintended yet predictable negative consequences for many students, teachers, and schools. It is essential that the public and policy-makers understand the scope and impacts that result from the inherent paradoxical nature of high-stakes testing. Testing is viewed by policy makers across party lines as an ""objective"" measure of student attainment and has become their tool of choice to drive educational ""reform"" and hold children, teachers, schools, and districts accountable. Bipartisan support for test-based accountability is firm. For example, on January of 2005 President Bush called on Congress to extend NCLB testing in math and science to freshmen, sophomores and juniors citing poor performance among high school students as a ""warning and a call to action."" (NYT 01/ 13/05) Senator Kennedy, a critic of the President, nonetheless supported the President's proposed high school testing provisions.

• Traces the harms produced by educational measurement to the ideology underscoring the concepts and ideas that guide the development of educational measures, the questions explored by educational researchers, and the narrations employed to disseminate findings. • Explores how Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, QuantCrit, Critical Quantitative Analyses, and Intersectionality can be applied to antiracist educational measurement. • Argues that the embrace of social justice as fairness is requisite for the field to address the inequities of education in our increasingly complex society.

The importance of student assessment, particularly for summative purposes, has increased greatly over the past thirty years. At the same time, emphasis on including all students in assessment programs has also increased. Assessment programs, whether they are large-scale, district-based, or teacher developed, have traditionally attempted to assess students using a single instrument administered to students under the same conditions. Educators and test developers, however, are increasingly acknowledging that this practice does not result in valid information, inferences, and decisions for all students. This problem is particularly true for students in the margins, whose characteristics and needs differ from what the public thinks of as the general population of students. Increasingly, educators, educational leaders, and test developers are seeking strategies, techniques, policies, and guidelines for assessing students for whom standard assessment instruments do not function well. Whether used for high-stakes decisions or classroom-based formative decisions, the most critical element of any educational assessment is validity. Developing and administering assessment instruments that provide valid measures and allow for valid inferences and decisions for all groups of students presents a major challenge for today's assessment programs. Over the past few decades, several national policies have sparked research and development efforts that aim to increase test validity for students in the margins. This book explores recent developments and efforts in three important areas. The first section focuses on strategies for improving test validity through the provision of test accommodations. The second section focuses on alternate and modified assessments. Federal policies now allow testing programs to develop and administer alternate assessments for students who have not been exposed to grade-level content, and thus are not expected to demonstrate proficiency on grade-level assessments. A separate policy allows testing programs to develop modified assessments that will provided more useful information about achievement for a small percentage of students who are exposed to grade-level content but for whom the standard form of the grade-level test does not provide a valid measure of achievement. These policies are complex and can be confusing for educators who are not familiar with their details. The chapters in the second section unpack these policies and explore the implications these policies have for test design. The third and final section of the book examines how principles of Universal Design can be applied to improve test validity for all students. Collectively, this volume presents a comprehensive examination of the several issues that present challenges for assessing the achievement of all students. While our understanding of how to overcome these challenges continues to evolve, the lessons, strategies, and avenues for future research explored in this book empower educators, test developers, and testing programs with a deeper understanding of how we can improve assessments for students in the margins.

• Traces the harms produced by educational measurement to the ideology underscoring the concepts and ideas that guide the development of educational measures, the questions explored by educational researchers, and the narrations employed to disseminate findings. • Explores how Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, QuantCrit, Critical Quantitative Analyses, and Intersectionality can be applied to antiracist educational measurement. • Argues that the embrace of social justice as fairness is requisite for the field to address the inequities of education in our increasingly complex society.