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National Assessment of Title I - Final Report

NCEE 2008-4012
June 2008

B. Key Findings - Implementation of State Assessment Systems

During the 2005-06 school year, all states administered assessments intended to meet NCLB requirements for reading and mathematics, and as of September 2007, 24 state assessment systems had been approved by the Department, through a peer review process, as meeting all NCLB testing requirements. The remaining 28 states fell into one of two categories: approval expected (8), or approval pending (20). The eight states currently designated as "approval expected" submitted evidence indicating that their assessments were fully compliant with the statutory and regulatory requirements, but certain elements were not yet complete because of the nature of assessment development. For the 20 states designated as "approval pending," the evidence submitted indicated that one or more fundamental components were missing or did not meet the statutory and regulatory requirements. Although science assessments are not required until 2007-08 under NCLB, three states had their general and alternate assessments in science approved ahead of schedule along with their reading and mathematics assessments.

  • Many state approaches to assessing English language proficiency (ELP) were still evolving as of 2004-05. Although all states were implementing some kind of ELP assessment in 2004-05, 44 states indicated that they anticipated making revisions to their ELP assessments. Twenty states reported that their ELP assessment met NCLB requirements, 27 states planned to implement an ELP assessment that meets NCLB requirements by 2005-06, and five states had not decided which ELP assessment to use to meet NCLB requirements.
  • As of 2004-05, states varied in the extent to which they have met the requirement to annually assess 95 percent or more of their students across various subgroups. For the low-income student subgroup, 48 states assessed at least 95 percent of students in reading and 49 states assessed at least 95 percent of students in math. For the students with disability subgroup, 45 states assessed at least 95 percent of students in reading and 46 states met the requirement in math. However, for the LEP student subgroup, 38 states met the requirement in reading and 45 states met the requirement in math.