The Place of National Testing in Educational Development: the faces of "Strong" and "Weak" Assessmen

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The is considerable agreement among educators that national assessment andtesting is capable of meeting both summative and formative goals. The summative ones include certification, selection and placement; and the formative ones include improving teaching and learning, curriculum auditing, monitoring of national achievement, and improving curriculum development. Illustrations from Caribbean countries as well as from countries outside the region are employed to show that the summative purposes are generally realized but evaluators and policy makers have not done a particularly good job
in providing teachers and schools with the kinds of information from these national testing programs that are needed to realize the formative purposes.