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Standards: General statements of expectations regarding student knowledge and skills.
Performance Standards: Statements that provide a clear description of what a student should be able to do at a particular level.
Content Standards: Statements that provide a clear description of what a student should know in a content area at a particular level.
Benchmarks: Clear, specific descriptions of knowledge and skills that students must have as they pass certain thresholds.
Learner Outcomes: Very specific learning objectives which state (1) a condition of learning, (2) an observable behavior in the form of an action verb, and (3) a criterion measure.
Assessment: A organized method for obtaining information that can be used to make inferences and judgments about characteristics of students and/or programs.  Synonymous terms include:  test, measurement, examination.
Standards-Based Assessment: An assessment which is designed from content and/or performance standards.
Achievement Test: A measure of what has been learned from what was taught in a particular course or series of courses.  In foreign language testing, achievement tests (1) are discrete point, (2) are based on a particular curriculum, and (3) measure accuracy in vocabulary and grammar.
Proficiency Test: A measure of one's knowledge and/or ability without regard to formal study or text used.  In foreign language testing, proficiency tests (1) are integrative, (2) are independent of curriculum, and (3) measure appropriate use of language in context.
Prochievement Test: A hybrid tests that elicits actual communicative use of the language within an authentic context (proficiency) using particular vocabulary and grammar covered in a course or series of courses (achievement).
Standardized Test: A testing instrument that is administered, scored, and interpreted in a standard manner.
Criterion-Referenced (CRT) Test: A criterion-referenced test measure a student's performance according to specific standards, rather than to the performance of other test takers.
Norm-Referenced (NRT) Items: A norm-referenced test measures the achievement of students compared with the performance of a national sample of students.
Computer-Adaptive Testing: The computer adjusts the level of difficulty of subsequent questions based on previous answers.
Percentile: A ranking scale ranging from a low of 1 to a high of 99 with 50 as the median score. A percentile score does not refer to the percentage of questions answered correctly, it indicates the test-taker's standing relative to the norm group standard.