Research Brief
Lessons Learned from Developing and Implementing the Qatar Student Assessment System
Jul 1, 2009
Lessons from the Field
Developing and Implementing the Qatar Student Assessment System, 2002-2006
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Qatar has recently positioned itself to be a leader in education. Central to the country's efforts is the implementation of reforms to its K-12 education system. Central to the reform initiatives was the development of internationally benchmarked curriculum standards in four subjects: Arabic, English as a foreign language, mathematics, and science. To develop a method of testing student achievement in relation to the curriculum standards, a RAND study team worked with Qatar's Evaluation Institute between 2002 and 2006 to create the Qatar Student Assessment System (QSAS). The core component of the QSAS is the Qatar Comprehensive Educational Assessment (QCEA), a summative assessment administered to students in grades 4-11 in newly developed Independent schools. This report recounts the development of the QSAS and the QCEA, the changes made to the testing operation as the reform initiative progressed, the data and knowledge gleaned from QCEA administrations, and important lessons learned for Qatar and other countries that are seeking to implement similar standards-based assessment systems on a large scale.
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Introduction
Chapter Two
Design of the Qatar Student Assessment System: A Work in Progress
Chapter Three
Implementing the QCEA in 2004, 2005, and 2006: Test Development and Administration
Chapter Four
Scoring the QCEA and Reporting Results
Chapter Five
Lessons Learned and Future Directions
Appendix A
Assessment Elements Considered for the QSAS
Appendix B
Steps to Align Assessments with Curriculum Standards
Appendix C
Performance-Level Results of 2005 and 2006 QCEAs for Ministry of Education, Private Arabic, and Independent Schools
The research described in this report was prepared for the Supreme Education Council and conducted within the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute and RAND Education.
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