The Trouble with Test Scores. (Stateline).

New research has found that test scores, particularly year-to-year score gains, are too erratic to be used fairly to hold schools accountable, according to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing. Average school scores and short-term gains or losses typically fluctuate widely due to factors outside a school's control, according to researchers Thomas Kane and Douglas Staiger. Proposed revisions to the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act call for major decisions about schools to be made solely on the basis of annual changes in test scores. And about half the states now use test scores to reward or punish schools.