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Currently, schools are being asked to participate in a higher number of educational assessment programs, with minimal returns, apart from the snapshot of performance about the educational outcomes of a state or country and how it compares to other states or countries. Somehow we are over-tested but under-assessed: «Many schools continue to engage in summative testing-educational autopsies that seek to explain how the patient died but offer no insight to help the patient improve» (Reeves, 2006, p. ix). The scores on these assessments help inform educational policy makers but are of limited value in practical instructional settings, since they do not usually help inform classroom instruction and learning. Is there a way to increase the impact of assessment on learning? Is it possible to develop instructionally-relevant assessment measures? Randy Bennett has been leading an innovative research program launched by the Educational Testing Service in 2007, whose goal is not only the assessment of learning but also for learning and as learning: CBAL (Cognitively Based Assessment of/for/as Learning). CBAL combines the summative (of learning) and formative (for learning) components of assessment, working with innovative tasks viewed by teachers and students as worthwhile learning experiences in and of themselves (as learning), delivered primarily by computer. CBAL is also a good example of a theory-driven program: the CBAL assessments are developed using a rich theoretical framework with competency models that delineate the knowledge, processes, strategies, and habits of mind important for success in a domain, as well as how students progress from simple to complex performances in specific skills, formulating hypothesized learning progressions (Bennett, 2010). Designing test items according to a cognitive model has been recognized as an important way to improve the quality of test items and the validity of inferences drawn from test scores (Embretson & Gorin, 2001; Mislevy, 2006; Nichols, 1994). This is because a cognitive model provides an explicit understanding of the knowledge and skills normally used by students to solve standardized tasks in a test domain. Unfortunately, there is still a shortage of models that characterize student performance in most testing situations. As part of the CBAL English Language Arts competency model, Paul Deane and Yi Song (this issue) present a case study where they describe the framework and learning progressions for argumentation, a complex skill playing an important role not only in reading and writing but in everyday life. Peter van Rijn, Aurora Graf, and Paul Deane later address the empirical recovery of the learning progressions of this skill for middle school students, scrutinizing their performance on three parallel scenario-based assessment forms, and providing a method that consistently classifies students in the levels of the argumentation learning progression when different forms are used. Since cognitive models help clarify the psychology that underlies test performance, scores from cognitively-based tests may be more interpretable and meaningful. The remaining papers in this issue describe three approaches that contribute to building the interpretation/use argument and the validity argument (Kane, 2013): the assessment triangle, the Evidence-Centered Design (ECD), and the Cognitively Diagnostic Assessment (CDA) and the Cognitive Diagnosis Model (CDM) framework. The assessment triangle supplies a framework to improve assessment through its three foundational elements (cognition, observation, interpretation), working with a design process that connects the three elements of the triangle to ensure that the theory of cognition and learning, the observations and the interpretation process work together to support the intended inferences from test scores. The assessment triangle was proposed by the National Research Council (NRC) committee in charge of reviewing the advances in the cognitive and measurement sciences at the beginning of the new millennium (Pellegrino, Chudowsky, & Glaser, 2001). James Pellegrino (this issue) outlines the main ideas underlying this framework, and also considers the use of an ECD process to develop and interpret assessments, as well as the assessment framework driven by models of learning expressed as learning progressions. He advocates a coherent assessment system, describing the contexts and purposes of educational assessment, and the types of assessments required to fulfill the learning goals involved in the process of educational transformation in the new century. He considers assessment as a positive influence on teaching and learning, as long as it is properly conceived, designed, and implemented. ECD is a way of formalizing the test design process strongly related to the validity of the test scores. It is based on the principles of evidentiary reasoning (Mislevy, Steinberg, & Almond, 2003), and *Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Maria J. Navas. Departamento de Metodología de las Ciencias del Comportamiento. Facultad de Psicología. Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia. Juan del Rosal, 10. 28040 Madrid (España). E-mail: mjnavas@psi.uned.es

Bringing added value to educational assessment: A shift from an audit mode of assessment to an assistence mode