REL Northeast and Islands Releases First Report

The REL Northeast and Islands has released the first of its "Fast Response" studies funded by the U.S. Institute of Education Sciences. The Impact of Benchmark Assessments Aligned to State Standards on Student Achievement was undertaken by this Regional Educational Laboratory in response to strong regional interest in benchmark and formative assessments and the lack of independent studies of their effect.

Working with data from the Massachusetts Department of Education's Benchmark Assessment Initiative, the study sought to determine whether middle schools that implemented benchmarks in mathematics showed greater gains in student achievement on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). The study examined 22 treatment schools, matched with 44 non-treatment schools, looking at trends over time—from 2001 to 2006, the intervention year.

Researchers found, based on the available data, no immediately statistically significant difference between the treatment and program schools. A number of limitations may have occluded the possibility of a clear result, however. Only one year of post-implementation data was collected. Benchmark and formative assessment practices are already common in the region, and the study was conducted in the absence of data about non-treatment schools' assessment approaches. Finally, the study was not randomized. Further research will look at additional years of data, explore implementation practices, gather student-level rather than school-level data, and examine data by content strand.

Download the study: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/northeast/pdf/REL_2007039.pdf