Student responses to the West Virginia Educational Standards Test (WESTEST) 2 Online Writing Assessment are scored by a computer-scoring engine. The scoring method is not widely understood among educators, and there exists a misperception that it is not comparable to hand scoring. To address these issues, the West Virginia Department of Education…

The TIMSS 2011 International Database includes data for all questionnaires administered as part of the TIMSS 2011 assessment. This supplement contains the international version of the TIMSS 2011 background questionnaires and curriculum questionnaires in the following 10 sections: (1) Fourth Grade Student Questionnaire; (2) Fourth Grade Home…

Many articles and reports have reviewed, researched, and commented on international assessments from the perspective of exploring what is relevant for the United States' education systems. Researchers make claims about whether the top-performing systems have transferable practices or policies that could be applied to the United States. However,…

In a previous study, (ED 038 175) Mississippi children, who were a year younger (3 1/2 to 4 1/2) than Alabama children, had scored higher than the Alabama children on posttesting. This supplementary report gives the results of further investigation of this finding. Explanations may be: (1) the younger children began with higher IQ scores; (2) more…

Results are reported at the end of the second year of a 3-year comparison of four prekindergarten programs: Bereiter-Engelmann, DARCEE, Montessori and Traditional. A number of classes in each program style were used with 246 four-year-olds in Head Start. Children were tested early in the year, at the end of the year, and at the end of kindergarten…

The use of videotape, 16mm film, or personally conducted programs in the Dallas Public Library story hours was studied to determine the effectiveness of the three methods in improving the listening skills of preschool children of varying socioeconomic levels. This report of the 1981/82 research project provides information on sample size…

A comparison is presented of alternate-choice and true-false item forms used in an undergraduate natural science course. The alternate-choice item is a modified two-choice multiple-choice item in which the two responses are included within the question stem. This study (1) compared the difficulty level, discrimination level, reliability, and…

Pupils at three elementary schools and one junior high school among Area 1 inner-city schools of St. Louis Missouri, were identified as scoring well below norms on standardized tests. An effort to change the educational programs at these schools netted financial support and the creation of Project SHAL (named for the schools involved). Inservice…

A group of highly regarded schools in affluent suburban areas was divided into two groups: those judged to have a traditional orientation and those judged to have a more experimental orientation, in terms of course and program structure. A review of the mean Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) from the 1966, 1969, 1973, and 1976 graduating classes from…