To find out whether the education community shares a collective understanding about how students should be evaluated, we surveyed 202 educators (from all grade levels) and scientists attending assessment workshops (Pennsylvania, California, and Massachusetts) or judging a national student competition (Washington, DC). The educators and scientists…

Examines students' amusing responses to essay test questions, while maintaining that such responses can still give a teacher a better indication of what students are learning in the classroom than can objective tests. (HTH)

Midterm grades of students are compared to the grade the student gave the professor on his teaching effectiveness. A better than chance correspondence shown in a one-way analysis of variance is discussed in relation to subordinate-supervisor ratings. (Author/KM)

A multi-faceted Rasch measurement (MFRM) model was used to analyze a clinical skills assessment of 173 fourth-year medical students in a Midwestern medical school to investigate four types of rater errors: leniency, inconsistency, halo, and restriction of range. Each student performed six clinical tasks with six standardized patients (SPs), who…

This step-by-step guide to informal, classroom-based assessment of students with special needs offers a comprehensive presentation of error analysis procedures. The book deals with the following topics in 10 chapters: (1) an overview of traditional academic assessment; (2) enhancing the learning of handicapped preschoolers; (3) errors and error…

Seven research-based papers on writing disorders of learning-disabled college students are listed and reviewed. The papers deal with persistent auditory language deficits in adults with learning disabilities; error patterns and instructional alternatives relating to college learning-disabled writers; syntactic complexity in written expression;…

Causes of language fossilization and ways to overcome it are considered. Fossilization is the relatively permanent incorporation of incorrect linguistic forms into a person's second language competence. The discussion is focused on fossilization of incorrect syntactical rules, based on experiences with learners of English as a second language at…

The articles contained in this volume on second language writing evaluation focus on the evaluation of academic English learned as a second language (ESL). Essays include: "Assessment by Misconception: Cultural Influences and Intellectual Traditions" (Brigid Ballard, John Clanchy); "Reading the World Differently: A Cross-Cultural Approach to…