They are designed both to accompany and supplement that text, providing some guidance to the
literature available, and, in some cases,
giving a review of recent research
on the
subject concerned.
That is, bias (a highly controversial issue covered in the research
literature and also
on this blog; see recent posts about bias here, here, and here), does also appear to exist in this state and particularly at the school - level for (1)
subject areas less traditionally tested and, hence, not often consecutively tested (e.g., from one consecutive grade level to the next), and
given (2) the state is combining growth measures with proficiency (i.e., «snapshot») measures to evaluate schools, the latter being significantly negatively correlated with the populations of the students in the schools being evaluated.