Balancing Local Assessment with Statewide Testing: Building a Program That Meets Student Needs Author: Stanley N. Rabinowitz, Sri Ananda As statewide assessment programs focus in on high-stakes student and school accountability concerns, they must rely increasingly on narrower and more conservative assessment methods. While these instruments can reveal relative strengths and weaknesses across large groups of students, they do not yield the kind of specific information needed to guide instruction for individual students -- and herein lies the essential role of local assessment. This Knowledge Brief describes important attributes of a model local assessment program. It then walks the reader through the steps for building a local system that will elicit diagnostic information about what individual students are doing well, where they are struggling, and how the instructional program might be modified to address their needs. ADD TO CART PDF Version: http://www.wested.org/online_pubs/kn-01-01.pdf Audience: Policymakers, Administrators Product Information Format: Print Publisher: WestEd Copyright: 2001 Product #: KN-01-01 Pages: 8 Price: $8.00 Discount: 25-50 units: 20% off 51-100 units: 25% off 101 or more units: 30% off