Although competency-based graduation programs possess an intuitive appeal because of their clearly specified outcomes, external evaluation provision, and quality control mechanisms, they do pose a number of student evaluation problems which have rarely been encountered in American education. This discussion is concerned with such problems. (Author)

Evaluation anxiety can have a significant impact on adult learning, and it is a generally inescapable part of teaching-learning transactions. Too much evaluation anxiety can be devastating. This paper examines the effects of evaluation anxiety on adult learning, discussing the causes, the control measures, and the implications for adult educators.…

Study examined the impact of method on speech ratings of classroom teachers by concurrently testing reliability and validity for the analytic and holistic methods, holding the variables of raters and speeches constant. Student speeches were videotaped and scored. Both methods produced similar and acceptable levels of reliability and concurrent…

Student disengagement from school is observed through withdrawal, absenteeism, low-level participation, and discipline problems. This article discusses research on student evaluation systems and presents a study on high school students and the extent to which they experience incompatibilities in the school's evaluation and authority system. (DF)

Reported are results of a study on how teachers plan for evaluation of their own instruction and how they implement such plans in the classroom. Subjects were 292 first year elementary and secondary teachers. Results suggest the relationship between evaluation plans and actual in-class evaluation was quite strong. (IAH)

Researchers revised a psychological assessment of organization in memory to measure organization in thinking. Secondary students viewed a videotape, wrote essays, then created word trees using provided words that eliminated the memory component in their original task. The ordered-tree technique reliably measured organization in thinking.…

Discusses various issues in equating large-scale writing assessments and the implications for performance assessments in other disciplines. Issues include defining the underlying construct, the nature and effect of the assessment task, the assessment context, the scoring system and scale size, judge characteristics, and student characteristics.…

Describes the developmental process of the Dallas Independent School District Chapter 1 portfolio assessment and compares the portfolio results to the standardized measures available within the district. Concludes that there are two different types of portfolios based on the purpose intended, accountability or instructional improvement. (SM)

Surveys of 504 educators in northeast Arkansas examined their attitudes toward recommendations for educational practice made by the Association for Behavior Analysis Task Force on the Right to Effective Education. Results indicated educators strongly supported recommendations for changes in curriculum and instruction but strongly opposed…