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This research employed a mixed-methods approach to explore the best practices of ordinary national educational testing (O-NET) to improve the quality of basic education. The methodology was divided into four phases, the first of which was a survey and analysis of the current situation at ONET. The sample group was made up of representatives of the school under the office of the basic education commission (OBEC), primary education, comprising the school administrators and teachers teaching in four subjects. Phase 2, "multiple case study," is qualitative research by selecting specific case studies for 10 primary schools based on criteria for selection and collecting data through in-depth interviews. A semi-structured interview form was completed by 30 key informants. Phase 3, the synthesis (draft) of best practices, and phase 4, the checking and proposing of best practices by 25 assessors. The results showed the best practices in using the test results of O-NET to improve the quality of basic education were 4 components: i) school management (16 practice guidelines); ii) learning management (10 practice guidelines); iii) student promotion (6 practice guidelines); and iv) parent communications (3 practice guidelines). The best practices were in accuracy, propriety, feasibility, and utilization; all were at the highest level.

Assessment is an important component of learning which aims to determine student achievement in learning. However, the pandemic has changed how assessment is carried out, prompting teachers to look for new strategies in carrying out mathematics learning assessments under any conditions, whether in normal conditions or during a pandemic. This study described the strategies used by high school mathematics teachers in assessing mathematics learning during the pandemic towards the post-pandemic period. This type of research is descriptive exploratory research with a qualitative approach. The subjects in this study were three mathematics teachers, three principals, and three vice principals from a public senior high school in Yogyakarta City, Indonesia. Qualitative data were collected by means of questionnaires, interviews, and documentation. The collected data were analyzed qualitatively according to Bogdan and Biklen. The results of the study reveal that the mathematics teacher's strategy for carrying out assessments during a pandemic includes: i) determining the appropriate online assessment platform that suits the needs; ii) assessment based on student participation; iii) using various of online assessment methods; iv) prioritizing academic integrity and honesty in the assessment implementation; and v) carry out the management and reporting of data on the results of the assessment in accordance with established procedures.

This paper focuses first on the issue of measuring education. When we consider "education and equity," we tend to quantify educational outcomes and compare these figures with others. While it is necessary to consider "equity" (or inequity) through comparisons with others, if we quantify the achievement of outcomes and evaluate the management of the organisation, we fall into a "metric fixation." Next, the paper discusses the issue of meritocracy, presenting a perspective on abilities as social and communal rather than individual. Finally, it discusses the concept of "collaborative learning" as presented by the Central Council for Education Report of 2021. This report states the importance of respecting all others as valuable beings. In order to clarify the significance and value of the presence of others in educational relationships, the paper considers a certain high school discussion situation. "Equity" in education cannot be realised by comparing personal figures on a particular scale. If we wish to realise "equity," paradoxically, it is essential that we do not ask whether we are achieving "equity" through comparison with others. Being equally opaque to one another, being diverse, is essential for the realization of pleasurable "collaborative learning."

Concerns with educational quality have led to the implementation of external school evaluation (ESE), based on the premise that these processes can provide valuable information about schools and, consequently, create conditions for improvement. Improvement is based on the feedback, commonly in the form of an evaluation report, resulting from evaluations, describing the reality of each school, and providing clues and guidance for action and progress. Nonetheless, ESE still has a relatively weak impact on overall school improvement. With this in mind, this paper focuses on the potential of evaluation reports to promote improvement, aiming to answer the question: What kind of feedback on school self-evaluation (SSE) does ESE provide to schools? Focusing on the Portuguese case, the paper analyses the feedback regarding school self-evaluation provided in evaluation reports from the northern region of Portugal. The study concludes that the feedback provided in the reports is mainly descriptive and generic, referencing issues that apply to all schools rather than targeting issues specific to each school. This leads to the hypothesis that the vagueness of ESE feedback can explain the limited contribution external evaluations make towards SSE improvement in particular, and school improvement overall. The example of Portugal and self-evaluation can help bring to light where ESE processes are underperforming and require investment to achieve their goals.

In 2007, the Ministers of Education across Canada adopted the Canadian Degree Qualifications Framework, articulating learning outcomes for bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees. Yet, by 2016, only 30% of Canadian institutions reported having learning outcomes for all programs (MacFarlane & Brumwell, 2016). One obstacle institutions face when developing program learning outcomes (PLOs) is faculty resistance. Unfortunately, faculty participation is critical to successfully implementing PLOs. This paper describes the process used to develop PLOs in the Faculty of Science at UBC Okanagan, which is deeply collaborative and consultative, to gain faculty buy-in and initiate a positive culture around learning outcomes and assessment. This was accomplished by educating faculty on the benefits and rationale for implementing PLOs, fostering faculty ownership of PLOs, supporting faculty through the process, and engaging with various stakeholders. This collaborative process led to community building, increased stakeholder commitment, laid the foundation for future collaborations, and fostered robust PLOs.

Assessment professionals are often at the helm of leading discussions around data-use and data-driven decisions for higher education stakeholders. However, the problem is that assessment practitioners must be cognizant of how to engage stakeholders with equity-minded and socially just informed assessment practices. The purpose of this article is to provide a literature review of approaches to equity-minded data use and positing that assessment professionals should engage in Freirean critical pedagogy approaches to data use practices. The article opens with a discussion of the intersection of diversity, equity, and inclusion work with assessment practitioners. Next, an introduction to the Freirean concept of engaging in praxis and how assessment leaders may unknowingly participate in what Freire calls banking education where educators act as a conduit to merely deposit information into students. The article concludes with recommendations for how assessment leaders can engage stakeholders in Freire's concept of "true dialogue."

LaGuardia Community College in Queens, New York is known for its leadership in assessment practices aimed at improving teaching and learning. Its practices to improve student outcomes include remedial math and composition pathways reforms and establishing signature general education core competencies and communication abilities. Combined together, such practices have helped double the graduation rate over a decade. Until recently, however, assessment data had not been disaggregated for different student demographics. In this article, we describe how we transformed our traditional means of analyzing outcomes data toward one that utilized an equity-driven index for two cohorts of students across major racial and ethnic populations. We examined the data for representational equity and equitable performance. In a key finding, we discovered our ongoing assessment practices do not reflect our student population on both counts, especially as a designated Hispanic Serving Institution. Further, we found other under- and over-representation of racial populations in our general education assessment samples. We conclude by suggesting further areas of inquiry with equity-based assessment and note ongoing challenges to systematizing this approach.

Colleges and universities depend upon external approvals from accreditors, government agencies, and national organizations. These approvals require periodic review of institution-prepared reports and self-studies documenting the continued validity of offered degrees and programs, student support and success, institutional effectiveness, and continuous improvement. Campus leaders generally take one of two approaches to complete this work: deploying working groups and committees or relying on one or two institutional accreditation leaders. This 2024 AALHE Conference session introduced a third approach, a hybrid of the two dominant approaches, which begins with a campus-wide assets-based exercise for gathering information and evidence. Deploying the exercise decreases the time campus stakeholders must commit to these recurring external review processes; provides accreditation leaders with information and evidence that reflect the breadth of the institution's activities; addresses the problem of a narrow interpretation of assessment activities; and is more effective in the current higher education milieu where institutional effectiveness and continuous improvement are embedded across the breadth of institutionally unique activities.

Online learning has become an important advance in education in the last decade. We developed an online learning system related to land and tree measurements. University students were given pre- and postexposure surveys for two courses offered within the online system. Surveys were designed to assess whether the knowledge level and confidence of students increased through interaction with the online system. A final assessment was conducted to understand user experiences with the online technology. Statistically significant increases in knowledge and confidence concerning land measurement concepts and tree measurement topics were evident among survey participants. Survey participants agreed that the course functioned properly, that graphics and images within the courses were useful, and that using the system prior to in-person instruction helped students better understand concepts.

The research aimed to examine the components of effective academic administration involving collaborative participation from parents and the local community in small-sized schools under the authority of the Basic Education Commission. The study employed a mixed-method research approach, incorporating both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, divided into two phases. Phase 1: Examine the components of academic administration by synthesizing documents and related studies. Phase 2: Conduct interviews and verify the effectiveness of academic administration. The information providers consisted of 7 highly qualified individuals in the field of educational administration. The selection method was purposive sampling. The tools utilized included interview and assessment forms. Statistical analysis involved mean, standard deviation, and content analysis. The research findings indicated that the effective collaborative components of academic administration involving parents and communities in small-sized schools consisted of three main components: 1) The workload and scope of academic administration in small-sized schools, comprising 10 aspects, 2) Effective academic administration, consisting of 4 aspects, and 3) Collaborative management processes, involving 4 steps. The assessment results demonstrated a high level of suitability for the effective collaborative components of academic administration involving parents and communities in small-sized schools, both at the individual component level and overall. The component with the highest level was the development of an internal quality assurance system within the educational institution, including measurement, assessment, and comparison of learning outcomes. Conversely, the component with the lowest level was the development of learning resources.

Universities have been at the center of educational debates since their inception. Their functions, aims and products have been questioned in the context of social, cultural, economic and technological changes. In this context, the aim of this study is to critically examine university education from the perspectives of undergraduate students. The study was conducted with a quantitative design by analyzing the data collected with the "Critical University Education Scale" developed by the researcher with 236 undergraduate students studying at Kafkas University. During the development of the scale used in the study, factor analysis, which is a principal component analysis for validity, KMO (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin) value, which is a test of sphericity, was calculated and the Cronbach Alpha Coefficient formula was used to ensure reliability. In the data analysis of the study, descriptive statistics, independent t-test and One-Way ANOVA were used, and it was examined whether there was a difference in the thoughts of the undergraduate students participating in the study regarding university education according to their age group, gender, program, year of study and their father's education status. As a result of the research, it was seen that undergraduate students were more critical of the statements in the dimension of teaching practices than in the dimension of innovation and creativity, free thought and inquiry. It was concluded that undergraduate students' critical thoughts regarding university education differed according to age, gender, program, year of study and father's education status.

Since the 1950s, educational literature has explored the potential of translating art criticism into classroom practices. This eventually led to the emergence of educational criticism as a distinctive form of inquiry in the 1970s. However, despite its potential for exploring educational experiences and evaluating educational programs, educational criticism remains a relatively underutilized research method within the education community. It is hypothesized that educational researchers are not adequately equipped with the specialized knowledge and technical skills required for constructing an educational criticism. Based on this understanding, this paper aims to clarify what educational criticism is, how it can be used, and what criteria should be used to evaluate its quality. Methodologically, educational criticism is a type of arts-based educational inquiry that is conducted to understand and explore the characteristics, meaning, and/or value of an educational event. Researchers employing this method act as educational connoisseurs who employ the art of criticism to make public their observations of educational practices. These observations are organized through four interrelated features: description, interpretation, evaluation, and thematic analysis. To ensure the trustworthiness of educational criticism, scholars have proposed four core criteria: structural corroboration, consensual validation, referential adequacy, and instrumental utility. This analytical framework enables educational researchers to utilize educational criticism as a tool for exploring educational experiences and evaluating educational practices.

The purposes of this study were to: 1) identify instructional leadership of teachers, 2) develop the Instructional leadership indicators of teachers, 3) investigate the goodness-of-fit between the structural model of instructional leadership indicators of teachers and empirical data, and 4) produce a user manual of the instructional leadership indicators of teachers in educational opportunity expansion schools under the Primary Educational Service Area Offices in the northeast. The study was divided into four phases. The findings were as follows 1. The components of instructional leadership of teachers in educational opportunity expansion schools consisted of seven components, namely 1) self and other teacher development, 2) curriculum development ability, 3) learning management ability, 4) learning assessment and evaluation ability, 5) transformational leadership, 6) learning exchange ability and 7) moral and ethics. 2. The indicators of instructional leadership of teachers in educational opportunity expansion schools comprised seven principal components, 25 sub-components and 98 indicators. All principal components achieved the mean scores at high level of appropriateness 3. The indicator structural model of instructional leadership of teachers in educational opportunity expansion schools was congruent with empirical data. (Chi-Square=202.84, df=176, p=0.08095, GFI=0.97, AGFI =0.95, RMSEA=0.016, CN=668.53) and 4. The user manual of the instructional leadership of teacher indicators in educational opportunity expansion schools under the Primary Educational Service Area Offices in four aspects obtained the Index of item-objective congruence (IOC) at 1.00 indicated that the user manual was appropriated to be implemented.

The traditional points system and subsequent Grade Point Average (GPA) in education perpetuates an evaluation of academic performance which reflects arbitrary weighting of assignments and/or assessments. As such, GPAs which are calculated using a traditional points system are not unidimensional in their design. The baseball batting and slugging percentage, which serves as established metrics for performance evaluations among baseball players, better reflects unidimensionality. In essence, this paper puts forth an analysis and discussion which posits that baseball batting average and slugging percentage can serve as an example for how unidimensionality can become more prevalent in educational assessments, especially as it relates to the traditional points system and GPA.

The Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM), based in the North of England, recently celebrated its 40th birthday. Arising from an evaluation project at Newcastle University, and a subsequent move to Durham University, it rapidly grew in scope and influence, developing a series of highly regarded school assessments. For a relatively small organisation, its influence was seen across the world, resulting in outreach centres in New Zealand, Australia, and Hong Kong. Since being acquired by Cambridge University Press & Assessment in 2019, it has established itself in a unique role within the wider Cambridge organisation due mainly to its development of computer adaptive assessments for use in schools. This article documents the rise of CEM, from its early successes to its adoption of new ideas in educational assessment and supporting technology until the present day. However, CEM's development was not without its controversies, and these too make fascinating reading when set against the background of 40 years of ever changing educational policies.

MOOCs (massive open online courses), because of their scale and accessibility, have become a major area of interest in contemporary education. However, despite their growing popularity, the question of their quality remains a central concern, partly due to the lack of consensus on the criteria establishing such quality. This study set out to fill this gap by carrying out a systematic review of the existing literature on MOOC quality and proposing a specific quality assurance framework at a micro level. The methodology employed in this research consisted of a careful analysis of MOOC success factor's using Biggs' classification scheme, conducted over a four-year period from 2018 to 2022. The results highlighted the compelling need to consider various indicators across presage, process, and product variables when designing and evaluating MOOCs. This implied paying particular attention to pedagogical quality, both from the learner's and the teacher's point of view. The quality framework thus developed is of significant importance. It offers valuable guidance to MOOC designers, learners, and researchers, providing them with an in-depth understanding of the key elements contributing to MOOC quality and facilitating their continuous improvement. In addition, this study highlighted the need to address aspects for future research, including large-scale automated evaluation of MOOCs. By focusing on pedagogical quality, MOOCs can play a vital role in providing meaningful learning experiences, maximizing learner satisfaction, and ensuring their success as innovative educational systems adapted to the changing needs of contemporary education.

Society is in an incessant process of reflection, but the educational system is not following the same path, creating an urgent need for a quality educational renovation in which new methodologies, approaches and educational resources are developed based on creation, collaboration and learning by doing. In this sense, the integrated education of science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) is postulated as an educational approach through which to transform the teaching-learning processes into processes that contribute to the development of critical, creative, and scientific thinking. Proof of this is the continuous increase in publications in this line of research. This article presents a systematic review with a total of 19 studies published in high-impact journals with the aim of making a critical reflection and evaluating the real scope of incorporating STEAM projects in education to improve the students' mathematical skills. In particular, five areas of interest have been evaluated: active learning in the teaching of STEAM subjects, the development of technological resources, the design and implementation of educational proposals, the evaluation of STEAM education and teacher training in STEAM education. Considering the results, we emphasize the need to continue working on the theoretical foundation and educational practice of this approach to allow teachers to implement it effectively.

This study examines the capacity of primary school teachers to design, organize, and evaluate experiential activities, utilizing a robust measurement framework grounded in the 2018 General Education Program. The evaluation encompasses 540 teachers, drawing on diverse sources, including questionnaires, regulatory documents, and input from educational stakeholders. The findings highlight commendable strengths in planning and organizing experiential activities, with 324 teachers demonstrating excellent or good capacity. However, critical gaps are evident, particularly in contextual analysis, testing tool design, and information processing, reflecting a need for targeted professional development. The measurement framework, calculated with a distance value of 0.8, employs a scale categorization that offers nuanced insights into the varying impact of experiential activities. The study underscores the significance of targeted professional development initiatives tailored to address identified gaps. Curriculum adaptations are recommended to leverage successful strategies, and informed decision-making is facilitated by evidence-based policies. The findings advocate for a culture of continuous improvement in educational practices. While the study provides valuable insights, limitations include contextual specificity, potential subjectivity in self-reported data, and the exclusion of student perspectives. A quantitative emphasis, reliance on a single methodology, and a sample size of 540 teachers may impact generalizability. This research informs educational stakeholders, policymakers, and practitioners about the current state of experiential education in primary schools. The study, within its limitations, contributes actionable insights to enhance the effectiveness of teacher training and curriculum design, fostering an environment conducive to experiential learning practices.

Public pressure on evaluation has influenced educational projects and national evaluation systems for many decades. This article extends the ongoing discussions in the field, offering a problematising exploration of evaluation as an educational policy phenomenon, thinking with the notion of rhythm in the analysis. Approaching educational evaluation with the notion of rhythm has, for us, implied a philosophical exploration of the dynamics between evaluation and education, drawing on the writings of Henri Lefebvre and Anna L. Tsing. Rolling of chairs between computers, with the policy documents spread out on a table alongside the original philosophical texts, in a material sense, placed us, as researchers, in an embodied analytical process between human and non-human agency. The turns and returns, back and forth, between policy, philosophy, and previous research enabled unexpected frictions to emerge and prompted us to view issues central to evaluation in surprisingly new ways. 'Striving towards goals and orientations', 'goal-in-between', 'striving-in-between', and 'results of and for results' are with inspiration from Anna L. Tsing presented as a rush of troubled stories.

I review opportunities and threats that widely accessible Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered services present for educational statistics and measurement. Algorithmic and computational advances continue to improve approaches to item generation, scale maintenance, test security, test scoring, and score reporting. Predictable misuses of AI for these purposes will result in biased scores, construct underrepresentation, and differential impact over time. Recent efforts to develop standards for AI use in testing like those of Burstein are promising. I argue that similar efforts to develop AI standards for educational measurement will benefit from increased attention to the context of test use and explicit commitment to ongoing monitoring of bias and scale drift over time.

Topic models are mathematical and statistical models used to analyze textual data. The objective of topic models is to gain information about the latent semantic space of a set of related textual data. The semantic space of a set of textual data contains the relationship between documents and words and how they are used. Topic models are becoming more common in educational measurement research as a method for analyzing students' responses to constructed-response items. Two popular topic models are latent semantic analysis (LSA) and latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA). LSA uses linear algebra techniques, whereas LDA uses an assumed statistical model and generative process. In educational measurement, LSA is often used in algorithmic scoring of essays due to its high reliability and agreement with human raters. LDA is often used as a supplemental analysis to gain additional information about students, such as their thinking and reasoning. This article reviews and compares the LSA and LDA topic models. This article also introduces a methodology for comparing the semantic spaces obtained by the two models and uses a simulation study to investigate their similarities.

I consider recent attempts to establish standards, principles, and goals for artificial intelligence (AI) through the lens of educational measurement. Distinctions are made between generative AI and AI-adjacent methods and applications of AI in formative versus summative assessment contexts. While expressing optimism about its possibilities, I caution that the examples of truly generative AI in educational testing have the potential to be overexaggerated, that efforts to establish standards for AI should complement the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing and focus attention on the issues of fairness and social responsibility, and that scientific advance and transparency in the development and application of AI in educational assessment may be incompatible with the competitive marketplace that is funding this development.

This article presents the consensus of an National Council on Measurement in Education Presidential Task Force on Foundational Competencies in Educational Measurement. Foundational competencies are those that support future development of additional professional and disciplinary competencies. The authors develop a framework for foundational competencies in educational measurement, illustrate how educational measurement programs can help learners develop these competencies, and demonstrate how foundational competencies continue to develop in educational measurement professions. The framework introduces three foundational competency domains: Communication and Collaboration Competencies; Technical, Statistical, and Computational Competencies; and Educational Measurement Competencies. Within the Educational Measurement Competency domain, the authors identify five subdomains: Social, Cultural, Historical, and Political Context; Validity, Validation, and Fairness; Theory and Instrumentation; Precision and Generalization; and Psychometric Modeling.

The transformation of higher education provision by neoliberal values has been well documented. However, recent criticisms and even attacks upon higher education indicate a new politics extending beyond neoliberalism. This article draws on the sociology of conventions to unpick the distinctions at work in these new criticisms of universities. By distinguishing between values based in the market world, industrial world and civic world, we elaborate the political basis of recent value controversies around higher education (HE), reflected in policy and rhetoric. Looking to reject aspects of the neoliberal HE model, some critics have sought to revalue higher education upon productivist values, attacking universities for failing to generate 'use' value for students and society. Populist actors have launched stronger criticisms, aiming to revalue higher education on nationalistic and traditional values. This has generated the devaluation of higher education in national public spheres. As higher education has expanded globally, this new politics emerges from conflicts within and between conservative and liberal elites. Trends in Hungary and Brazil indicate the successes and failures of populist attacks on universities. Trends in the United Kingdom and Australia reflect productivist revaluations of market-based HE. Elite revaluation and devaluation is producing an emerging new global politics of HE.

This study evaluates a subjective performance-evaluation regime in place in the English public school system since the early 1990s. Under this regime, independent inspectors visit schools, assess schools' performance, and disclose their findings on the Internet. Inspectors combine hard metrics, such as test scores, with softer ones, such as observations of classroom teaching, in order to arrive at an overall judgment of school quality. Schools that receive a fail rating may be subject to sanctions, such as more frequent and intensive inspections. The author provides evidence on the effectiveness of several aspects of the inspections system. First, he demonstrates that inspection ratings can aid in distinguishing between more- and less-effective schools, even after controlling for test scores and various other school characteristics. Second Hussain, exploiting a natural experiment, shows that a fail inspection rating leads to test-score gains for primary school students that remain evident even after the students move into secondary schools. No evidence is found that schools that receive a fail rating are able to inflate test-score performance by gaming the system, suggesting that oversight by inspectors may mitigate such strategic behavior.

Quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) is important for young children's holistic healthy development. As ECCE scales, contextually relevant and feasible measurement is needed to inform policy and programs on strengths and areas for improvement. However, few measures have been designed for use across diverse contexts. Drawing on principles of mixed methods design, this study reports on a new approach to ECCE quality measurement: the Brief Early Childhood Quality Inventory. Using data from the USA, Liberia, and Colombia, results indicate variation in the items perceived as highly relevant to each setting and in the characteristics of classrooms including the degree of child autonomy, the types of activities, and in child/educator interactions and dialogue. However, despite this variation, a small set of items indicate potential functionality as cross-country anchor items. Findings lend support to the idea that quality measures can have some common elements with room for adaptation within and across settings. Future work in this area should address the possibility that the significance of these practices for child development also varies across settings.

The use of professional internships has long been a defining feature of journalism and mass communication programs, but the practice is also increasingly controversial for the financial burdens it places on marginalized students. This study examined accreditation reports for 120 institutions to gain a better understanding of current practices. Findings showed that almost all universities offer internships for credit, and about two fifths of the programs require them. Most programs use internship data to assess student learning outcomes.

Marginalization, widely associated with poverty, inequality, and underdevelopment restricts access to resources, limits freedom of choice, inhibits the development of individual capabilities, and makes it challenging to escape from marginalized circumstances. We examine marginality in mathematics teaching and its complexities in the tightly centralized educational system in the Philippines by identifying the different situations that contribute to how mathematics teachers can be excluded from certain educational practices that would normally fall within their mandate as professional teachers. Adopting Gatzweiler and Baumüller's (Marginality: Addressing the nexus of poverty, exclusion and ecology, Springer:27-40, 2014) framework, we interviewed 15 mathematics teachers from different geographical locations around the country. We identified and organized the drivers of marginality into biophysical and societal causal clusters that enable or constrain teachers to act as professionals. Biophysical causal clusters include mathematics curriculum and mathematics assessments among others while societal causal clusters include various directives, interpretations, and realities surrounding the biophysical causal clusters. Discussions about the complexities brought about by these clusters and how teachers act or respond as they navigate around them are highlighted. Recommendations for concrete de-marginalization actions are offered.

Shifts in the education system to more student-centered learning will require state and local education agencies to rethink how they do their work. Current accountability systems focus on compliance with standards, as demonstrated in annual summative assessments. Mark Elgart explains that a new approach to accountability will offer more authentic and flexible assessment options and give schools support for continuous improvement in response to assessment results. Instead of focusing on compliance and testing, state education agencies can shift to offering options for assessment and resources for professional development. Local education agencies would be responsible for providing accountability data to the state and providing professional development on how to use assessment data for continuous improvement.

Nationwide large-scale assessments (NLSA)--an example of cross-border policy mobility--manifest a proliferating means of governing formal schooling. In the Russian context, NLSA takes the form of a compulsory graduation examination called the Unified State Examinations (USE). In this article, we explore how a mobile policy instrument of the NLSA participates in the relational processes of time- and space-making in a particular federated context of Russia, and how this process intertwines with and is shaped by the presence of multiple time zones. We argue that NLSA is an instrument of time that attempts to achieve centralization of the complex federated structure of the Russian Federation. Yet, the work of the NLSA is not a smooth process in a country characterized by territorial vastness, a complex federated structure, and the existence of multiple time zones. Guided by the theory of logistical power and sociological perspectives on time, as well as empirical insights, we show how the time zones need to be tamed in order for the NLSA to exercise its centralizing role. Discursively, the time zone is introduced and publicly discussed to symbolically characterize Russia and justify political actions or their outcomes. Bureaucratically, the desire for simultaneity and synchronicity takes the form of a meticulous ordering of a sequence of actions through prescriptive documentation that regulates the NLSA. Technologically, synchronicity, simultaneity, and instantaneousness rely on and engender an expanding national infrastructure that mediates social relations and the processes of conducting the NLSA, cutting across the time zones and federal units. Based on this analysis, we propose that scholarship on policy mobility and education policy sociology at large could benefit from examining the relationship between time and education policy and governance in four intertwined ways: the time of policy, context as time, policy instruments as instruments of time, and time in policy instruments.