Many Pennsylvania colleges and universities require that teacher candidates pass a standardized assessment in order to gain formal entry in to their education programs. Standardized tests are also required for Level I teacher certification within Pennsylvania. The initial assessment required of all Pennsylvania preservice teachers for…

Demands for accountability have seen the implementation of large scale testing programs in Australia and internationally. There is, however, a growing body of evidence to show that externally imposed testing programs do not have a sustained impact on student achievement. It has been argued that teacher assessment is more effective in raising…

Operational testing programs employing item response theory (IRT) applications benefit from of the property of item parameter invariance whereby item parameter estimates obtained from one sample can be applied to other samples (when the underlying assumptions are satisfied). In theory, this feature allows for applications such as computer-adaptive…

This report compares students' scores on the 2000 Delaware Student Testing Program (DSTP) writing assessment with the writing scores of their counterparts in 1998 and 1999. In addition, the results of a writing study are discussed briefly. Delaware students in grades 3, 5, 8, and 10 took the 2000 DSTP writing assessment, responding to a text-based…

Every year the state of North Carolina requires an English II writing test as part of the End of Course examinations. The purposes of the English II tests are to assess students' mastery of writing, application of grammatical skills, and achievement in literary analysis. This report contains information about the test performance of students in…

This study invesitigated possible reasons for the low performance on the text-based writing assessment of the Delaware Student Testing Program (DSTP) in 2000, especially for grades 3 and 5, and considered ways to improve classroom instruction. In the first part of the study, a panel of teachers reviewed the anchor papers from the assessment and…

The Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) is a state-mandated, criterion-referenced or mastery test that has been administered since the 1990-91 school year. The TAAS measures student mastery of the statewide curriculum in reading and mathematics at grades 3 through 8 and at the exit level, and in writing at grades 4 and 8 and at the exit…

This report presents Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) performance results and results on the Texas Educational Assessment of Minimum Skills (TEAMS) in October 1990. This volume is comprised of the following sections: (1) Section I, an executive summary of TAAS performance for each grade level; (2) Section II, an overview of the program…

This booklet contains the practice tests for the Sixth-grade Ohio Proficiency Tests. Student work on these practice tests helps the teacher evaluate how well the student understands the subjects of writing, reading, mathematics, citizenship, and science. The writing test consists of two writing tasks based on one stimulus passage, and the reading,…

This report of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) Student Performance Results lists performance results on the TAAS and the Texas Educational Assessment of Minimum Skills (TEAMS), an exit examination, alphabetically by school district for each grade level tested (grades 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 for the TAAS and grades 11 and 12 for the initial…

Beginning in February 1994, twelfth-grade students who have passed the Ohio Ninth-grade Proficiency Tests in all areas will take the Twelfth-grade Proficiency Tests in writing, reading, mathematics, and citizenship. This fact sheet describes the Twelfth-grade Proficiency Test in writing, which is designed to measure a twelfth-grade level of…

This manual contains directions for the teacher and oral directions to be read to students taking the practice tests of the Ohio Proficiency Tests for grade 6. Directions are ordered in the sequence of the sections in the Practice Test booklet (writing, reading, mathematics, citizenship, and science), and they are similar, but not identical, to…

New Mexico has established a system of student achievement assessment that consists of four coordinated testing programs. District and state results are given for these assessments. The Reading Assessment, consisting of a norm-referenced test and a criterion-referenced test, is used in grades 1 and 2 to assess student mastery of essential…

The purpose and results of the state testing programs in Utah are described. At present there are seven major assessment programs conducted under the leadership of the Utah State Office of Education. These include the three components of the Core Assessment Program: Criterion-Referenced Tests and item pools, Writing Assessment, and the new…

Statewide results of South Carolina's Basic Skills Assessment Program (BSAP) are provided in terms of the percentages of students meeting statewide performance standards in reading, mathematics, writing, and science. BSAP tests were administered statewide on April 23-27, 1990, in grades 1, 2, 3, 6, and 8. The BSAP Exit Examination was administered…