Primer on Large-Scale Assessments of Educational Achievement

Book excerpt: To improve their education systems, countries around the world have increasingly initiated national largescale assessment programs or participated in international or regional large-scale assessment studies for the first time. Well-constructed large-scale assessments can provide credible information on student achievement levels, which, in turn, can promote better resource allocation to schools, stronger education service delivery, and improved learning outcomes.The World Bank developed this 'Primer on Large-Scale Assessments of Educational Achievement' as a firststop resource for those wanting to understand how to design, administer, analyze, and use the results from these assessments of student achievement. The book addresses frequently asked questions from people working on large-scale assessment projects and those interested in making informed decisionsabout them. Each chapter introduces a stage in the assessment process and offers advice, guidelines, andcountry examples. This book also reports on emerging trends in large-scale assessment and provides updated information on regional and international large-scale assessment programs.DIRK HASTEDT, Executive Director of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA): 'A special feature of the publication is that it not only gives an overview of technical specifications, but also includes examples from around the world on how countries are conducting large-scale assessments, what they found, and how the results were used. With this perspective, the Primer on Large-Scale Assessments of Educational Achievement is an excellent and easy-to-read publication to get a comprehensive overview oflarge-scale assessments and how and why they are conducted.'SILVIA MONTOYA, Director of UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UNESCO UIS): 'If you are responsible for learning assessment in a country and are searching for a comprehensive, yet readable, guide on large-scale assessment, this is your book. Extremely well structured and written, this primer is easy to follow, and makes points clearly and concisely. It is an excellent resource that explores the steps for a good large-scale assessment with examples from all international large-scale assessment programs.'ANDREAS SCHLEICHER, Director for the Directorate of Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Secretary-General: 'Many countries have joined international educational assessments to benchmark quality, equity, and efficiency in their education systems. But what does it take to design and implement those efforts well and to draw value from this to help students learn better, teachers teach better, and schools to work more effectively? This Primer on Large-Scale Assessments of Educational Achievement helps policy makers and their technical teams to find answers to these questions.'ANDREI VOLKOV, Director of the Institute for Public Strategy, Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO: 'In 2008, when the Russia Education Aid for Development (READ) Program was launched, we determined its main goal as the improvement of the quality of basic education. Today, the READ Program keeps setting trends as the largest Russian initiative promoting educational assessment. Approaches developed within the READ Program, from building institutional and expert capacity to influencing educational reforms, have proven their efficacy in many countries. The Primer on Large-Scale Assessments of Educational Achievement brings together in a practical format the best experience and case studies in conducting assessments under the READ Program. An especially important feature of the book is an integrated capacity building component, which makes it a practical tutorial ready for use in different cultural contexts. Through this book, we hope that our collective experience gathered during READ will be widely shared, bringing us closer to ach