The author reprises "The Man in the Principal's Office," by Harry Wolcott (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973) to tell a story of how the principalship and thus principals have changed since the late 1960s, when the book closely examined day-to-day tasks of a principal. The differences are stark and many. Parent, community, and…

Assessments were an important tool recommended by "A Nation at Risk;" however, a generation after that report, many of the problems with student assessment still remain. This article offers brief reflections on three somewhat overlapping but enduring issues in educational assessment: validity, construct underrepresentation in outcome measures in…

This report on the First Annual National Conference on Student Competencies focues on the legal challenges to competency testing. (IRT)

Competency testing programs in Detroit, Illinois, and in the states of Maryland, Texas, and South Carolina have positively influenced student learning. In all four programs, measurement was perceived as a catalyst to improve instruction. (MLF)

Offers a brief report on the National Assessment of Educational Progress conference on minimum competency testing. Among the reports was one asserting a logical relationship between student competency testing and teacher competency testing, and one noting that no research evidence shows that mandated student competency testing programs are…

However feasible or easy it is to do minimum competency testing, the difficult task will be to defend doing it. (Author)

Faculty members at America's colleges and universities have long thought that an alarming number of high school graduates do not arrive on campus with the writing skills they need. Now leaders of major U.S. corporations are joining their academic colleagues in complaining about a serious deficiency in the writing skills of today's college…

Reason and evidence provide little, if any, justification for the belief that minimum competency testing will help poor students to learn or poor teachers to teach. (Author)

Compares the results of the first and second years of testing in the Florida minimum competency program to show that the program is working. (IRT)

Rebuts the article on minimum competency testing by Diana Pullin in the September 1981 "Kappan." Argues that the competency testing program in Florida is a powerful force for motivating improvement. (Author/WD)

A survey of teacher education institutions indicates that only five of the 17 curriculum areas investigated are significantly affected by the implementation of state minimum competency testing programs. (Author/IRT)

The responses to an informal survey of the states indicate that most states are either giving competency tests, developing them, or making plans to do so. Many aspects of the current practices and trends need study and discussion. (Author/IRT)

Discusses the costs of developing, administering, and regulating state competency tests as well as of the compensatory programs that the tests will make necessary, and then suggests five ways of reducing these costs. (IRT)

Since 1960 Denver has operated a testing program designed to assure that high school graduates possess minimum competence in four basic areas--arithmetic, spelling, grammar, and reading comprehension. (Author/IRT)

A national proficiency testing program would weaken local decision-making capacity, resegregate the schools, and further the negative effects of nonpromotion of students. Such a program would also have several negative effects on the curriculum. (Author/IRT)