CA is one of many states facing important decisions on how to assess its students. This conference is an opportunity for policymakers, educators, education researchers, administrators, funders, and community partners to discuss the potential and challenges of performance assessments to support deeper and more rigorous student learning. A panel of leading education researchers, administrators, educators, funders, and community partners will discuss assessment policies and practices that support improved student achievement in CA.

In this seminar, Douglas N. Harris discusses the strengths and weaknesses of value-added assessment, both as a means to assess teachers and as a means to assess schools. Harris identifies the strengths and weaknesses of value-added measures, and discusses the errors that are often made in using and interpreting such measures. As a part of a system including other performance measures, Harris concludes that value-added assessments can be used to support progress in CA schools and classrooms.

EdSource, in collaboration with faculty from Stanford University, has conducted a large-scale study of middle grades practices in California and their relationship to student outcomes on 6th-8th grade CSTs in English Language Arts, Math, and Algebra. The analysis was designed to identify practices and policies that differentiate higher from lower performing schools after controlling for student background. This study of the middle grades is the largest of its kind ever conducted and will be discussed by Trish Williams and Mike Kirst in this seminar.

The CAHSEE has been criticized as being unfair to English Learners, special education students and some racial groups, as well as being ineffective in raising student achievement. Some have called for eliminating passage of the CAHSEE as a graduation requirement for CA students. In this seminar, Julian Betts discusses whether the requirement and funding for intervention is helping or hurting students academically, with a focus on who has been failing the exam, how early we can identify students at risk of failing, and when school districts might intervene to help students at risk of failure.