All educational testing is intended to have consequences, which are assumed to be beneficial, but tests may also have unintended, negative consequences (Messick, 1989). The issue is particularly important in the case of large-scale standardized tests, such as Australia's "National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy" (NAPLAN), the…

Gauging the effectiveness of specific teaching strategies remains a major topic of interest in science education. Inquiry teaching among others has been supported by extensive research and recommended by the National Science Education Standards. However, most of the empirical evidence in support was collected in research settings rather than in…

The TOWRE-2 was developed to provide an efficient measure of two essential wordlevel reading skills, sight word reading and phonetic decoding skills. The Sight Word Efficiency (SWE) subtest assesses the number of real words that an individual can read from a vertical list within 45 s. This subtest is designed to measure the size of an individual's…

Just like all the high-stakes tests that determine students' futures nowadays, The Chorizo Test is a standardized test rooted in the culture of the test makers. It was originally created to be used with students in teacher training programs to sensitize them to the pitfalls inherent in standardized pencil-and-paper tests, such as linguistic bias…

Despite the extensive testing for federal accountability mandates, college students' understanding of federal accountability testing (e.g., No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Spellings) has not been examined, resulting in a lack of knowledge regarding how such understanding (or lack thereof) impacts college students' behavior on accountability…

In this research, we investigated the suitability of implementing "e-rater"® automated essay scoring in a high-stakes large-scale English language testing program. We examined the effectiveness of generic scoring and 2 variants of prompt-based scoring approaches. Effectiveness was evaluated on a number of dimensions, including agreement…

This article reports the move from paper-based marking (PBM) to onscreen marking (OSM) in Hong Kong for the subject Liberal Studies--whose objectives involve broadening students' horizons through critical examination of current issues. While currently a small candidature subject of approximately 3300, from 2009, the subject will become compulsory…

A hallmark of school library media best practice is for the library media center to be open and accessible to patron use before, during, and after the school day and throughout the entire school year. Anecdotal evidence and informal discussion among school library media specialists indicate that library media facilities are sometimes used for…

This study investigated the views of parents, newborn hearing screeners and Telethon Speech and Hearing (TSH) professionals of the Western Australian Infant Screening for Hearing (WISH) Program. Three questionnaires were used to gather information from the participants. Sixteen responses to the questionnaire were obtained (five parents, five…

This report presents the results of a research and development effort for SpeechRater? Version 1.0 (v1.0), an automated scoring system for the spontaneous speech of English language learners used operationally in the Test of English as a Foreign Language™ (TOEFL®) Practice Online assessment (TPO). The report includes a summary of the validity…

Presents a test that teaches test-taking strategies and that can be used to reduce students' test anxiety. (AEA)

Discusses the importance of critical thinking for participation in democratic society and identifies the critical thinking skills tested in the eighth grade California Assessment Program. Provides an extensive appendix detailing a critical thinking skills continuum, a glossary of terms, and classroom strategies. (GEA)

Describes and illustrates the performance differences observed between boys and girls on California's history-social science assessments. Provides specific recommendations about what classroom teachers can do to help reduce these differences. (GEA)

The McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA) was administered to kindergarten-aged chilren to obtain General Cognitive Indices (CGI). A short form of the MSCA was developed to select six subtests that best predicted the CGI. (Author/BEF)

Deals with the methodology and practices for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Describes the EIA process, prediction process, alternative assessment methods, training needs, major activities, training provision and material, main deficiencies and the precautions, and real world training examples. (Author/YP)