This article examines a government attempt to impose testing of 4-year-olds as a baseline against which to "hold primary schools accountable" for children's subsequent progress. It examines the various forms of baseline testing in this experiment and analyses the misleading claims made for the "predictive validity" of baseline…

A classroom assessment environment is a classroom context experienced by students as the teacher determines assessment purposes, develops assessment tasks, defines assessment criteria and standards, provides feedback, and monitors outcomes (Brookhart, 1997). It is usually a group experience varying from class to class dependent upon the teacher's…

This study investigated the relationships between graduate students' placement test scores for English as a second language (ESL) and three measures of academic performance (grade point average [GPA], faculty evaluations, and student self-assessments). Qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques (archival, questionnaires, and…

TO CLARIFY ISSUES INVOLVED IN THE RAPID AND CONTINUING EXPANSION OF OVERSEAS STUDY PROGRAMS FOR AMERICAN COLLEGE STUDENTS, A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS WAS MADE OF DATA OBTAINED FROM A BATTERY OF TESTS AND INTERVIEWS WITH 85 JUNIORS ACCEPTED FOR STUDY ABROAD IN THE SPRING OF 1965. FINDINGS WERE COMPARED WITH SIMILAR DATA FOR NON-APPLICANTS AND REJECTED…

The controversy on the importance of children's attitudes toward their educational experiences has focused on two major questions: First, are attitudes an appropriate concern for educational systems; and second, are attitudes important as correlates of critical educational behaviors or simply as ends in themselves? This study attempted to add some…

A central problem for the user of domain-referenced tests in instruction is deciding who has passed and who has failed. Two procedures were presented and discussed. The first, employing classical test theory, was found to be more useful for larger domains and where the passing standard is 70 percent or less. The sampling procedure suggested by…