US Educational Terms Glossary (Garland Green)

• An assessment designed to discover how an individual student s performance or test result compares to that of an appropriate peer group. (Compare to criterion-referenced assessment.)
  
  
• An assessment in which an individual or group's performance is compared with a larger group. Usually the larger group is representative of a cross-section of all US students. (Ed Source)
  

National Staff Development Council

National Science Teachers Association

Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory

Office of Educational Research and Improvement (Now Institute of Educational Sciences) U.S. Department of Education

A program that provides systematic, explicit instruction to help students learn the structure of words and how to sound them out. Fluent reading and comprehension by the end of first grade is a program goal.

A question that has many avenues of access and allows students to respond in a variety of ways. Such questions have more than one correct answer.

A performance task in which students are required to generate a solution or response to a problem when there is no single correct answer.

A performance task in which students are required to generate an answer rather than select an answer from among several possible answers but there is a single correct response.

An integrated system of educational programs that aligns specific student outcomes instructional methods and assessment.