The problem explored in this study was the low achievement of third grade students on the English Language Arts (ELA) Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers Assessment (PARCC). The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore teacher perceptions about third grade students in one charter school who were…

Notwithstanding the introduction of education multilingual policies worldwide, testing and assessment procedures still rely almost exclusively on the monolingual construct. This paper describes a study, part of a larger project fostering a new multilingual education policy in Israeli schools, exploring bi/multilingual assessment. It included two…

In this article we discuss how apparently indicators that may appear straightforward, such as gender differences, need to be interpreted with extreme care. In particular, we consider how the assessment framework, and the methodology of international surveys, may have a potential impact on the results and on the indicators. Through analysis of…

Although millions of dollars and weeks of instructional time are spent nationally on testing students, educators often have little information on how to choose appropriate assessments of adolescent reading for informing instruction. This guide is designed to meet that need, by drawing together evidence about nine of the most commonly-used,…

A study examined state-mandated literature assessment procedures and undertook a content analysis of tests produced by proprietary testing companies and textbook producers in order to ascertain how literature achievement is assessed in the United States. Results indicated that 61% of the school systems assess literature as part of an assessment of…

Different aspects of text comprehension and different evaluation procedures were studied for elementary school students. Indicators sensitive to the different levels of comprehension involved were used, and recall was divided into recall macro, micro, and total. The sample consisted of 90 sixth graders in the national capital region of Canada.…

In response to the tradition of examining a new test's validity by comparing it with a well-established multiple-choice test, a study investigated whether multiple-choice tests with one right answer can measure the reading comprehension process as defined by constructivists. The study compared the information obtained from two different…

In the Dutch national examinations, reading comprehension tests are used for all languages. For the native language, reading comprehension is tested with reading passages and related questions to which the test-taker provides his own response, not choosing from a group of alternatives. One problem encountered in testing with these items is…

Elaborated as a response to a traditional set of secondary school poetry examinations that are called "sterile and outmoded," this report resulted from a series of seminars held in England by literature educators. The report offers extensive guidelines for modernizing the exams, examples of student critical writing about particular poems, and…

Presented in this symposium reader are nine papers, four of which deal with the theory and impact of the Rasch model on language testing and five of which discuss final examinations in secondary schools in both general and specific terms. The papers are: "Introduction to Rasch Measurement: Some Implications for Language Testing" (J. J.…