In 1989, NCTM proposed in their Curriculum and Evaluation Standards these MAJOR SHIFTS IN ASSESSMENT PRACTICE

TOWARD
  • Assessing students’ full mathematical power
  • Comparing students’ performance with established criteria
  • Giving support to teachers and credence to their informed judgment
  • Making the assessment process public, participatory, and dynamic
  • Giving students multiple opportunities to demonstrate their full mathematical power
  • Developing a shared vision of what to assess and how to do it.
  • Using assessment results to ensure that all students have the opportunity to achieve their potential
  • Aligning assessment with curriculum and instruction
  • Basing inferences on multiple sources of evidence
  • Viewing students as active participants in the assessment process
  • Regarding assessment as continual and recursive
  • Holding all concerned with mathematics learning accountable for assessment results

AWAY FROM
  • Assessing only students’ knowledge of specific facts and isolated skills
  • Comparing students’ performance with that of other students
  • Designing "teacher-proof" assessment systems
  • Making the assessment process secret, exclusive, and fixed
  • Restricting students to a single way of demonstrating their mathematical knowledge
  • Developing assessment by oneself
  • Using assessment to filter and select students out of the opportunities to learn mathematics
  • Treating assessment as independent of curriculum or instruction
  • Basing inferences on restricted or single sources of evidence
  • Viewing students as the objects of assessment
  • Regarding assessment as sporadic and conclusive
  • Holding only a few accountable for assessment results

New version (vision?) - 2000

What was New Jersey's response?

http://www.state.nj.us/njded/assessment/