**Table 2. Summary of best use for oral and standardized pencil-and-paper tests**

|**Purpose**|**Test format**<br>**(administration)**|**Teaching decisions**|**Policy decisions**|
|---|---|---|---|
||**Pencil-and-paper**<br>**(group)**|**NO.**Assume students are already<br>competent in phonological awareness,<br>phonics and decoding; are comfortable<br>using pencils; and understand the<br>mechanics of multiple-choice tests.|**YES.**Can be used to screen for<br>schools<br>performing<br>poorly<br>to<br>develop targeted programs (CRMs<br>are better for this), as well as for<br>effective schools, to draw lessons to<br>improve policy frameworks (NRMs<br>are better for this).|
|**Monitoring**<br>**progress**|**Oral (individual)**|**YES.**<br>Provide<br>more<br>and<br>timely<br>information. CRMs give teachers and<br>parents an idea of what constitutes<br>“grade-level<br>performance”<br>with<br>benchmarks.|**NO.**Too costly to implement for all<br>schools.|
||**Pencil-and-paper**<br>**(group)**|**NO.**It cannot be done with enough<br>frequencytoprovide feedback.|**YES.**Allows universal coverage<br>(recommended).|
||**Oral (individual)**|**YES.**As long as it is CRM and<br>administered to all students in the class<br>or a representative sample.|**NO.**Too costly to implement for all<br>schools.|
|**Outcome**<br>**evaluation**<br>Source: Prepar<br>and field exper|**Pencil-and-paper**<br>**(group)**<br>ed by the authors. Th<br>ience with both tests|**YES.**As long as it is CRM and<br>administered to all students in the class<br>or a representative sample.<br>e table reflects the assessment of the auth|**YES.**NRMs are most appropriate<br>when the purpose is to compare<br>outcomes<br>across<br>schools<br>or<br>jurisdictions. CRMs are most<br>appropriate for determining the<br>effectiveness<br>of<br>educational<br>programs.<br>ors based on their review of literature|

Now, beyond the four purposes commonly identified in the literature, evaluation of student performance is also an important accountability tool in education: schools are given an amount of resources and then they are held accountable for producing good results; the same is true for teachers, principals, local and national education officials. Because students enter first grade with different levels of exposure to language and print depending on their socioeconomic background, accountability against fixed standards in first and second grades is not appropriate. Instead, teachers, schools, education officials should be held accountable for producing progress in relation to the starting point. That is why diagnosis, monitoring and outcome evaluations are all needed for accountability.

For downward accountability from the school to the students, the parents, the community, oral reading tests that are criterion referenced can be used by parents and school boards to verify that students in the early grades are learning the basic skills. Oral tests are easy to apply by lay people and relatively low cost. On the other hand, pencil-and-paper tests are more appropriate for any type of systemic accountability, including upward reporting. End-of-the-year testing –such as the one carried out in Peru by the UMC– allows or encourages the use of scores to evaluate schools, administrators, and individual teachers because the scores are obtained very close to the end of a major instructional segment (the school year).

Having said that, using early grade reading measures for high-stakes accountability –e.g. to promote or fire personnel, award grants to schools, etc.– is not recommended. Some authors argue that before the age of 8, standardized pencil-and-paper achievement measures are not sufficiently accurate to be used for high-stakes decisions about individual children, teachers and schools, and advocate for beginning-of-the-year evaluations instead, precisely to discourage 19