Barbara Jordan served as the hearing officer for three-day adversary evaluation hearings about the pros and cons of minimum competency testing (MCT). This report is the complete transcript of the second day of proceedings. The pro team, lead by James Popham, began by presenting representatives of four states (Florida, California, Texas, and…

This paper examines the content of The California Critical Thinking Skills Test (1990). This report is not a statistical review. Instead it brings under scrutiny the content of the exam. This content will be of interest to the general reader, because the issues range from logic to ethics to pedagogy, and to questions of evidential and…

Conflicting policy decisions, scaling difficulties, teacher resistance, and mediocre results are slowing adoption of authentic student-evaluation measures. With more conservative state leadership, California and Arizona rejected performance assessment, and other states have followed. Despite various setbacks, new assessments are becoming the norm.…

Recommends including essay questions on state economics examinations to prevent misclassification of students. Briefly reviews the literature arguing that certain groups of students do poorly on multiple choice tests. Discusses California's experience with adopting a combined-format type test. (MJP)