For many decades, standardised assessments of achievement have been a cornerstone in educational monitoring in the United States and the United Kingdom. More recently, comparable governance elements have been implemented in other countries. Studies have demonstrated that governance systems that exclusively focus on outcomes can bear severe impacts on processes in educational systems. So far, findings from such studies are insufficient when it comes to sparking the development of more effective systems.

IPEA is an initiative that derives from the debate on consequences of standardised achievement tests. The international team is managed by Prof. Daniel Koretz, Harvard Graduate School of Education. The group focuses on researching the effect of monitoring systems. In particular, the initiative is concerned with assessing effects of formative and summative tests, consequences of tests regarding instruction, school, and system level predictors of test score inflation, the improvement of test designs and the role of school inspections, as well as other elements of school evaluation in conjunction with standardised achievement tests.