Georgia Center for Assessment College of Education unit is building expertise, campacity to better serve Georgia's testing needs in the future By Nicole Richardson | May 15, 2006

As teachers around the state watch their eleventh grade students complete the Georgia High School Graduation Writing Test each year, chances are neither they nor their students are aware that those tests are prepared and scored by an important unit of the University of Georgia’s College of Education.

For the past 21 years, the Georgia Center for Assessment (GCA), formerly known as Test Scoring and Reporting Services, has provided test scoring, test development, survey research, and training services to schools in Georgia as well as many other states.

Now, the unit has a new name, a new director and a new vision for expanding its services to accommodate more of the state’s test developing and scoring needs.

Marc Julian (L) and Allan Cohen bring a wealth of experience to the Georgia Center for Assessment.

“We began as a UGA support facility to assist the state educational testing programs,” said Allan Cohen, who became director of the GCA in 2003, “but we feel we could do much more to be of service to the state.”


To help build the GCA’s capacity and expertise, Cohen hired Marc Julian as a new associate research scientist. Before coming to UGA, Julian was director of research for a major division of the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in California.

“We’re really pleased to have Marc join us. He is one of the top measurement statisticians in our field and brings with him a wealth of experience and expertise to help us serve Georgia,” said Cohen. “He’s also a UGA grad. In fact, it was his experience at TSARS as a graduate student that made him a really attractive candidate to companies like CTB/ McGraw-Hill and ETS.”

The GCA has recently received a $1.5 million contract from the Georgia Department of Education to develop writing test prompts for third-, fifth-, eighth- and eleventh-grade students. The prompts serve as suggested topics to encourage students’ writing about personalized, creative or imaginary experiences.

“We’re developing a test for each of these grades to match the new Georgia Performance Standards, which replaced the state’s Quality Core Curriculum,” said Cohen.

“Because the standards have only been in place this past year, the Georgia Department of Education is waiting until after the students have had a chance to study under the new curriculum to give these tests.”

In developing the new writing tests, the GCA works with committees of teachers and administrators around the state. The committees hold several meetings throughout the year at the center in Athens to develop these questions.

Once questions are completed, field testing takes place to determine which questions are effective. GCA researchers also determine how to score the tests and provide statistical analysis of the scoring results to see whether the prompts provide a range of responses.

“If a prompt does not give us a range of responses, the assumption is that it is probably not going to be a good question,” said Cohen.

Cohen came to UGA from the University of Wisconsin where he established a national reputation in testing expertise over the last 25 years. At Wisconsin, Cohen directed a unit that provided placement testing for entering freshmen in English, mathematics and Spanish. Those tests, now used by more than 25,000 entering freshmen annually, were also published and sold to more than 300 colleges and universities around the country.

The GCA is housed in Fairfax Hall (a former motel on Milledge Avenue) because there is no available location on campus able to handle the millions of pieces of paper that flow in and out of the facility each year during the scoring process. Funding for the center comes from contracts with the Georgia Department of Education and fees from local school systems for specific services.

The grading procedures for the tests are developed in conjunction with the Georgia Department of Education. The Center receives the guidelines and develops training materials based on those guidelines. Each year the Center scores around 400,000 tests.

The GCA employs about 20 full-time staff but brings in around 100 people on a parttime basis to help grade the writing essays. In addition, the center supports several graduate students, some who have gone on to jobs at CTB/McGraw Hill, ETS, the College Board, and other major testing and research organizations.

TSARS was originally created to score the Georgia Criterion-Referenced Tests, and over the years has also scored the Georgia Basic Skills Test, the Curriculum-Based Assessment, and the Georgia High School Graduation Test.

“Beginning in 1987, we started scoring the Basic Skills Writing Test (a high school graduation exam used in Georgia between 1978- 92) and then expanded the writing scoring services to include third, fifth, eighth grades, and currently eleventh grade,” explains Steve Cramer, associate director of the GCA.

Over the years, the GCA has done work for many local school districts including those in Clarke, Cherokee, Cobb, Gwinnett and DeKalb counties. The center has also provided testing, surveys and faculty evaluations for the Georgia Center for Continuing Education, the College of Education and several other UGA departments.

“As the state testing program has changed over the years, we have had to change with it. We pride ourselves on being able to provide the kind of personal, flexible services that the major testing companies simply can’t provide,” explains Cramer.

Cramer, who has served as the interim director, also established a Supplementary Testing Program, which offers off-grade tests in writing for fourth, sixth, seventh and tenth grades.

“The purpose for the supplementary tests is to help schools identify students who might be at risk of failure on the state tests and to provide practice opportunities,” explains Cramer. “The tests give feedback to writing teachers about students’ current strengths and weaknesses.”

A predictor test is also available for the Georgia High School Graduation Tests in science and social studies.

In recent years, the GCA has completed more specialized projects, such as the audit of the standard setting and scoring of the South Carolina High School Assessment Program in 2003 and 2004. The center has also worked on several research projects for various clients, including the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Cohen said his vision for the center’s expansion is closely tied to UGA’s teaching, research and service mission and would benefit the state both educationally and financially. “If you spend the money in our shop for what you’re paying others to do in Chicago or Minneapolis, you get to spend that money twice,” he explained. “That’s because the money you spend in Georgia will be used to hire students, faculty and staff here in Georgia.

“We use our research operations to provide experiences to teach our graduate students and student teachers So we can provide the state with an excellent testing program while at the same time prepare teachers and assessment specialists, and we won’t need an extra allocation fund from the state to do it,” he said.

© 2006 University of Georgia