This report describes the procedures followed in scoring the October 1978 Florida Minimal Writing Production Skills Assessment and reports the results of that assessment. The assessment was conducted on a sample of Florida public school students in grades 3, 5, 8, and 11. Sections include descriptions of the rating scale and scorer's guide as well…

The South Carolina Basic Skills Assessment Program (BSAP), a testing program, presents information to determine how successfully children in individual school districts are achieving the minimum basic skills required by South Carolina law. Each year BSAP tests are given to children entering the first grade and to children in grades 1, 2, 3, 6, 8,…

Due to the current legislative trend toward competency-based education, and the accompanying minimal competency testing, a variety of local school districts and state education agencies are concurrently developing programs to meet the standards set by their state's legislation. This selective bibliography was compiled in order to aid those…

Focusing on the problems of assessing the speaking skills of secondary school students, this paper provides one example of how those problems were addressed in the Massachusetts speaking assessment. The paper identifies four requirements for measures of speaking skills: (1) feasibility, (2) reliability, (3) validity, and (4) freedom from bias. The…

The New Jersey Minimum Basic Skills (MBS) Tests in reading and mathematics were administered for the third consecutive year during the week of March 24, 1980 to approximately 390,000 publicly educated students in grades 3, 6, 9, and 11. The 1979-80 MBS Tests measured the same skills as the 1977-78 and 1978-79 tests. These three tests remained…

The Education Amendments of 1978, Part B of the Elementary Secondary Education Act Title IX were implemented because of the growing concern about illiteracy, test score decline, and educational accountability. They establish funds and technical assistance to state and local education agencies for program implementation and test development. Both…

The items of the Florida minimal competency test have never been validated as measures of "survival skills," and the pass/fail standards were set mindlessly and capriciously. (Author/IRT)

This review of the background and current status of state level activities in testing documents the shift in locus of educational control from local school districts to state agencies, the key dimensions characterizing such programs, factors influencing their implementation and their possible impact. (Author/AEF)

An overview and critique, with special reference to independent schools, of the minimum competency testing movement as a solution to the political and educational furor over declining student achievement. (SJL)

A framework for marine and aquatic education in Hawaii was developed for the purpose of restructuring attitudes on the use, protection, and appreciation of aquatic resources. This report identifies key elements of the framework and contains suggestions for its implementation and management. Contents include: (1) a rationale for marine education…

This guide is designed for educators involved in teaching, developing curriculum, or counseling students. It describes six new forms used to report the results of 10th-grade student performance on the Florida State Student Assessment Test, Parts I and II (SSAT-I and -II): (1) Parent Report, SSAT-I; (2) Student Report, SSAT-I; (3) Student Report,…

A final report is provided of the CASAS Project, a comprehensive educational assessment system designed to measure the identified competencies of local educational programs for all levels of Adult Basic Education (ABE) and English as a Second Language (ESL). The report begins with lists of personnel involved in the project, and an overview of…

Kansas law requires setting passing scores for the reading and mathematics competency test for 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, and 11th grade students, administered annually since April of 1980. New objective-referenced tests are prepared each year. Both judgmental (Angoff, Ebel, and Nedelsky) methods and empirical (contrasting groups and borderline) methods…

The efforts of researchers to produce a pool of approximately 30 validated and field-tested topics for use in future administrations of the Florida Teacher Certification Examination in writing are reviewed in this paper. Various sections of the paper (1) describe the procedures followed; (2) explain the reasons for making certain important…

The minimum requirements for sequential programs in the language arts and related enrichment programs recommended in this document were determined by the results of an Alabama State Department of Education survey, which ranked 60 educational goals in order of importance and in which the top five goals reflected an overwhelming concern for language…