Introduction of article briefly reviews history of accountability movement including international test performance, A Nation at Risk Report and several reports from the early 90's.

Notes numerous other components of ESEA-2001 (NCLB) including the use of evidence in making decisions - something we should look into.

Page 1 Footnote, forthcoming book edited by Baker

Results Based Reform (RBR): A system of sanctions dependent upon demonstrated (or not) outcomes

“Ideally” this is based upon established standards → instructional intervention → assessments that are publicized.

“Furthermore, there must be a known relationship among standards, benchmarks or targets, tests, information received by teachers, their interpretation, and the generation of new, improved approaches.” p. 2.

Notes relationships between RBR and programmed instruction and ISD.

“The logic of actions, the accuracy of inferences, and at the core, any reason at all to believe that systematic action will achieve positive results in an RBR framework depend on alignment.” p. 4.

Continues with a discussion of alignment that I hope goes somewhere.

Alignment in education, much like the planets, is constantly changing. (p. 9).

Alignment as congruence - (much like ID principles espoused by Smith & Ragan.)

Concerns related to transfer. Teaching to the test common but also encourages narrowing the range of test items and thus reducing likliehood of more expansive transfer.

Alignment as correspondence

“Correspondence permits analogies, functional rather than literal agreement, and a table of equivalences. For example, in the area of reading comprehension, it is possible to describe and illustrate the types of text and sorts of answers an individual is expected to provide to meet different levels of a standard, to make progress, and so on.” p. 13

Cite Equipped For the Future for correspondence http://eff.cls.utk.edu/

Alignment as a bridge, in other words what is the connection between instruction and assessment

Aligment as gravitational pull, using cross-curricular skills such as problem solving, knowledge acquisition and understanding, communication, and metacognition (p. 16)

“Such social alignment among individuals in an institution will give rise to the pursuit of the details that may be missed in a more bureaucratic approach to educational alignment.” p. 17

“An excellent article analyzing alignment by Bhola, Impara, and Buckendahl http://ezproxy.library.unlv.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&an=11354870 (2003) describes the processes to date used to characterize, document, and quantify alignment.” p. 18.

Listing of R&D priorities. Including measuring classroom practice.

“Can technology provide us with an automated analysis of the relationships among performance standards, tests, classroom assessments, texts, and student activities?” p. 19.