This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation | |
|---|---|
| Name | ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation |
| Formation | 1966 |
| Type | Clearinghouse |
| Headquarters | Urbana, Illinois |
| Parent organization | ERIC |
ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation The ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation served as a specialized knowledge center within the Education Resources Information Center network, collecting, synthesizing, and disseminating evaluation and assessment literature for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. It functioned as an intermediary among academic publishers, federal agencies, state departments, and professional associations to promote evidence-based assessment practices across K–12 and higher education settings. Its outputs informed standards, instrument development, program evaluation, and policy debates involving major stakeholders in American and international assessment communities.
Established amid the expansion of federally funded research during the Johnson administration era, the clearinghouse evolved alongside initiatives such as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the National Institute of Education, and the reauthorization cycles of the Higher Education Act of 1965. Early collaborations linked it to universities including the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Los Angeles, while influential figures in psychometrics such as Frederic Lord, Samuel Messick, and Lee Cronbach shaped its intellectual milieu. During the standards movement of the 1980s and 1990s, the clearinghouse intersected with organizations like the American Educational Research Association, the National Council on Measurement in Education, and the Council of Chief State School Officers, responding to policy shifts reflected in the Goals 2000 initiative and the No Child Left Behind Act.
The clearinghouse declared a mission to collect, index, and disseminate literature on assessment, program evaluation, and measurement validity to support practitioners at institutions such as the U.S. Department of Education, state education agencies, school districts like Chicago Public Schools, and postsecondary institutions including Harvard University and Stanford University. Its scope encompassed psychometrics, formative and summative assessment, performance assessment, accountability systems, and instrument development used by entities like the National Assessment Governing Board and international comparators such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Collections included peer-reviewed reports, technical manuals, conference proceedings from events like the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, white papers from think tanks such as the RAND Corporation, dissertations from institutions like Columbia University and University of Michigan, and federal reports from the Institute of Education Sciences. The clearinghouse curated special collections on topics tied to high-profile assessments such as the SAT, the ACT (test), and large-scale studies like the National Assessment of Educational Progress and international surveys including Programme for International Student Assessment. Archival holdings often referenced seminal works by authors associated with Educational Testing Service and publishers like Jossey-Bass.
Services comprised literature searches for agencies including the National Science Foundation, annotated bibliographies used by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and bibliometric syntheses employed by committees at the National Academy of Sciences. Products ranged from topic-specific digests and policy briefs utilized by legislators on Capitol Hill to practitioner-oriented guides adopted by professional groups such as the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and the American Association of School Administrators. The clearinghouse also produced searchable databases that paralleled resources from the Library of Congress and indexes resembling those of the Social Science Research Network.
Key partnerships included collaborations with federal entities such as the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences, academic consortia involving the University of Illinois system and the University of Kansas, and professional alliances with the American Educational Research Association, the National Council on Measurement in Education, and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. It supported multi-institution projects with international partners like the UNESCO International Bureau of Education and research programs tied to foundations such as the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Gates Foundation.
The clearinghouse influenced policy debates on accountability and assessment methodology that involved stakeholders such as state governors, the National Governors Association, and congressional committees. Its syntheses informed technical criteria used by testing organizations including ACT, Inc., Educational Testing Service, and developers of state assessments aligned with the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Scholarly impact is visible through citations in journals like Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice and policy documents produced by the National Research Council.
Governance typically involved oversight from host institutions and advisory boards composed of representatives from organizations such as the U.S. Department of Education, the Institute of Education Sciences, the American Educational Research Association, and major research universities. Funding was primarily federal, consisting of grants and contracts issued through entities like the Office of Educational Research and Improvement and later the Institute of Education Sciences, supplemented by cooperative agreements with foundations including the Spencer Foundation.
Category:Education organizations in the United States