Stanford University

The Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) was founded in 2008 to foster research, policy, and practice to advance high quality, high equity education systems in the United States and internationally. Under the leadership of Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, SCOPE will assemble research, information, and analyses about the costs of K-12 student performance assessments--addressing cost/benefit analysis and potential affordability of performance assessments of deeper learning--and help to support a communications strategy so that this information is readily available to policymakers and the public. SCOPE will produce a set of analytic papers, a set of policy-relevant materials, and host meetings with key stakeholders. The intended outcomes are to foster a better understanding on the part of policymakers and key thought leaders of how states can reorganize their resources to afford to implement robust assessment systems and how federal investments and incentives can support such state efforts.