Document Type
Issue Area Five
Abstract
The quality of education, particularly math and science, in the United States has been seriously questioned since 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. This historical event caused a public outcry which impacted education in several ways. Suddenly money was available to improve teachers' knowledge of science and mathematics content as well as money to develop better science and math curricula. Many teachers received stipends for these two purposes.
Along with the funding came the demand to show that the increased teacher staff development and curriculum development did indeed improve student achievement. Unfortunately, many objectives of the new curriculums were not adequately assessed by the available standardized, norm-referenced tests. In some cases, this led to a decrease in student performance on these tests in school districts which had adopted some of the new curricula. School districts then had several alternatives open to them: they could throw out the new curricula, they could develop new assessment instruments, or they could modify the new curricula and the assessment instruments. Many chose not to try the new curricula and waited until the textbooks integrated some of the new material.
Journal Title
Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series
Volume
4
Issue
2
First Page
143
Last Page
146
Publisher
Institute for Educational Leadership, University of Northern Iowa
City
Cedar Falls, IA
Copyright
©1993 Institute for Educational Leadership, College of Education, and the University of Northern Iowa
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Hewett, Gilbert E.
(1993)
"Educating the 'Public' on Assessment, Content,"
Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series: Vol. 4:
No.
2, Article 36.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/iel_monographs/vol4/iss2/36
