Throughout the 1990s, national state a local educational leaders have focused on raising educational standards and promoting accountability within the educational community. In fact, the promotion of challenging learning standards for all students -coupled with assessment systems that monitor progress and establish challenging expectation for students.

The numbers of states using tests as a condition for high school graduation is on the rise with 26 states projected to use tests as a condition for graduation by 2003 and six states now using tests as a condition for grade promotion.

High stakes testing programs are a product of the growing movement to improve public education by ensuring that schools more fully reflect and conform to the needs of business and industry and the criteria used to judge success and effectiveness in business and industry. Toward thi

Former vice president Gore supports testing as away of measuring what students have learned.

s end, the new ABCs and other high stakes testing programs emphasize the importance of holding teachers and schools accountable for students learning as measured by student's performances on standardized tests.

The stakes continue to rise as the program is implanted, proponents of high stakes testing advocate that the high stakes have a powerful impact on motivating teachers and school administrator to do what is necessary to bring about higher scores . The best way to discover how students think, or to diagnose where they are having difficulties in learning- which, aside from accountability and placement, is the main reason for testing is to given them as much range as possible to express themselves fully, and to asses their learning in its natural context, as they make active use of the skill . In North Carolina schools teachers

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