The primary purpose of the facility is to provide statewide assessment and orientation services for all male prisoners received into the prison system.

Mr. DiFrancesco said a statewide assessment of patients at state psychiatric facilities was under way.

The testing is aimed at establishing a statewide educational assessment and monitoring system.

"It's the only way we have of giving one uniform statewide assessment of those skills," he said.

"It means a statewide assessment is not as complete an assessment of a student as we would like," he said.

Six states reported conducting statewide assessments of student technology literacy in 2005-06, up from just two states in 2002-03.

Two states reported that they used statewide assessments of students' proficiency with technology.

Students' performance on these statewide assessments can be used as one of multiple criteria to determine grade promotion or retention.

This measure would have required students in public high schools to achieve a certain score on a statewide assessment prior to graduation.

Critics maintained that this system provided no statewide standards on subject content and no statewide assessment of what students learned.