The goals and content for this book are derived from three important and ongoing efforts: to advance the institution of education and to promote educational opportunities to children and youth worldwide, to promote effective assessment policies and practices that enhance sound educational practice, and to address the need to develop tests and other assessment practices in less developed countries as well as to augment and alter a number of traditional assessment practices in developed nations. These three issues provided the focus for a four-day conference that was held at St. Hugh''s College, Oxford University, in June 1993. The conference theme-Test Use with Children and Youth: International Pathways to Progress-underscores the importance of addressing testing issues as efforts to improve educational opportunities for children and youth move forward. Leaders from more than seventy nations met at the United Nations sponsored World Summit for Children in 1990 to support ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Worldwide recognition that every individual has the right to develop her or his potential led to the ratification of provisions setting minimum standards for children''s education.
