Formative assessment would be a more realistic way of assessing students.  The idea of a student and teacher being judged on one test is ridiculous.  Using handhelds or other forms of technology would increase teacher awareness of student understanding.  As a third grade teacher we focus our attention on ASK3 starting in September.  We have an after school program called NJASK Club and teachers are required to keep students who have previously scored on the cusp, in order to push them into the proficient area.  By the time the end of the school day comes around both the students and the teachers are wiped out.  The extra 30 minutes is only sometimes effective. 

Handhelds, if used correctly, could be extremely helpful.  Many teachers have difficulties with new technology.  Even younger teachers would have difficulty knowing what to do with the data once it came into the handheld.  It seems the district would have to hire a professional data expert to analyze all the data coming in.  I don’t think many districts are willing to do that.  I think if the district did provide handhelds that sent feedback to a teacher PDA, teachers would use it as an assessment of the lesson.  I would use it to check which students understand and which students are having trouble.  After the lesson was taught I would probably hand out an assessment page to students who understood, and pull the students who didn’t understand to the side table for further instruction. 

The Senteo Interactive response system remote is a way for students to send answers to the smartboard from their seats.  All students could use this and teachers could assess student knowledge through the use of remotes. 

Using Data Driven Decision making would be extremely helpful to all administrators and teachers if used correctly.  Part of the problem right now is that most teachers are not interested in learning new programs or taking the time to use a database correctly.  If you tied all databases together, the reports you could get would be endless.  A teacher could use the information to personalize teacher...a true differentiated instruction.  Administrators could use this information to analyze teacher performance.  It is true that the students will differ each year but if the teacher's class is consistently low, the administrator should take a closer look at what's being done in the classroom on a daily basis.  

NCLB measures many more categories that just pass/fail.  Administrators could also use this information to analyze special ed students, ESL students, minority students, etc.  These categories all count for NCLB score cards.  In looking at my school's report card I was not surprised.  Since we are a new school there are only 2 years of information so it's hard to analyze.