Celebrating 20 Years of Research on Educational Assessment: Proceedings of the 2005 CRESST Conference. CSE Technical Report 698

The 2005 National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) conference marked the 20th year of work on critically important accountability topics by the UCLA institution, "a tremendous accomplishment for a research center," according to Aimee Dorr, dean of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. In her welcoming remarks, Dean Dorr described why CRESST has achieved such longevity. The center is "independent, very lively, grounded in practice, and very forward looking, with many top accountability experts from around the nation," said Dorr, "interested in new technologies and helping to shape the future of education." She also noted that although it was "good fortune" for the center's senior partner to be located at UCLA, "it is a partnership throughout the country, and one that enriches us here as the partners do on the national scene." The anniversary for CRESST was an opportunity for the conference program to focus on the achievements in the use of assessment to improve student learning. The two-day gathering described many of the lessons learned from a century of testing. The discussions also featured the newest CRESST initiative, known as POWERSOURCE, a $10 million grant from the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education to develop formative mathematics assessments in the middle grades to improve student performance and learning.