National, Local Education Experts To Meet At UTD
To Discuss Best Ways Of Measuring Students’ Progress

RICHARDSON, Texas (Feb. 11, 2002) – National experts in learning and assessing the progress of students will join local and state education leaders Feb. 26 at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) to discuss how assessment testing can most effectively be used to improve K-12 education in the United States.

The daylong event – dubbed the Texas Education Symposium on Testing and Assessment – is being sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, Issues in Science and Technology and UTD, and will take place from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Galaxy Room of the Student Union Building on campus. The event is free and open to the public, but pre-registration is required.

“National education legislation mandates that all students in grades three through eight be tested as part of an effort to make schools accountable for their performance,” said Dr. John F. Kain, director of UTD’s Cecil and Ida Green Center for the Study of Science and Society and UTD’s Texas Schools Project. “Texas has been a leader in the use of testing to assess student progress, and it is hoped that by merging the practical experience of Texas educators with the scientific expertise of the National Academy of Sciences, useful guidance may be provided for all the nation’s school systems.”

Kain is one of a dozen experts scheduled to address the symposium. He will be part of a panel discussing the political and economic realities of testing reform.

The symposium is based on the experience of the Texas testing program and on research and studies conducted by the National Research Council’s (NRC) Board on Testing and Assessment, which studied the science and the use of measurement tests in schools.

The symposium will be the first public effort at which NRC committee members will work with local leaders to answer questions surrounding assessment testing, including how to make the most effective use of current tests, how tests can be improved to better measure what is most important to student development and how educators can use information technology to improve testing and make it more useful for individual students.

Lectures will cover such topics as the science of thinking and learning, the scientific foundations of assessment, the political and economic realities of testing reform and new directions for assessment. A Texas case history also will be presented.

Other speakers include:

  • John Bransford
    – Peabody College of Education, Vanderbilt University; Chair, National
    Research Council Committee On How People Learn
  • Pat DeVito
    -Executive Director, Board on Testing and Assessment, National
    Research Council
  • Brad Duggan –
    Just for the Kids; The University of Texas at Austin
  • Michael Feuer
    – Executive Director, Center on Education, National Research Council
  • Mike Moses –
    Superintendent, Dallas Independent School District
  • James Pellegrino
    – Department of Psychology, University of Illinois-Chicago; Chair,
    National Research Council Committee on the Foundations of Assessment
  • Steven Rivkin
    – Amherst College
  • Susan Sclafani
    – Counselor to the U.S. Secretary of Education, U.S. Department of
    Education
  • Lorrie Shepard
    – Dean of the School of Education, University of Colorado; Member,
    National Research Council Board on Testing and Assessment
  • Mark Wilson –
    School of Education, University of California – Berkeley; Member, NRC
    Committee on the Foundations of Assessment
  • Darvin M. Winick
    – Research Fellow, College of Education, The University of Texas at
    Austin

For registration information, contact Beth Keithly at (972) 883-4568.