Students whose primary language is not English and who are of limited English proficiency are an increasing percentage of North Carolina's school population at all grade levels and in all parts of the state. These guidelines are designed to clarify their participation in the statewide testing program. This program includes the end-of-grade tests…

Drawing from a review of the literature and direct experience, this paper discusses key issues in developmental mathematics placement. First, the controversial practice of mandatory placement is examined, citing research results that support the practice and those that do not. Next, the diversity of developmental math placement standards is…

The Cherry Creek School district (Englewood, Colorado) is a growing district of 37,000 students in the Denver area. The 1988 Colorado State School Finance Act required district-set proficiencies (standards), and forced agreement on a set of values for student knowledge and skills. State-adopted standards added additional requirements for the…

A survey was conducted by the Learning Assessment Retention Consortium of the California Community Colleges to determine the extent of community college involvement with academic standards in California. The survey investigated the relationship of the colleges to adult education, assessment practices, entrance standards for vocational and…

Studies and analyses conducted by the Assessment Center at Sacramento City College (SCC) between fall 1983 and fall 1984 provided the data on SCC's students and services which are presented in this report. Following an overview of the significant findings of the year's research efforts, part I sets forth the purpose of the report and part II…

This speech presents instructional evaluation techniques currently used in Belleville, Illinois. These are based on two criteria: (1) community opinion, and (2) performance level of students. To discover community opinions, needs, priorities, and levels of support, questionnaires are distributed, presenting a series of curricular goals and…

In response to citizens' need and right to know about how North Dakota students perform in mathematics, the Department of Public Instruction and the North Dakota Council of Teachers of Mathematics administered a criterion-referenced mathematics assessment in grades 4 (1,298 students) and 8 (1,475 students). Also included were items from the…

Curricular analyses, written by experienced teachers and experts, of the 1978 Illinois Inventory of Educational Progress (IIEP) results and teacher expectations regarding citizenship are presented. A random sample of 7,200 Illinois students within 360 schools (grades 4, 8, 11) were tested; results reflected their educational performance in these…

Much of the intrinsic wealth of planning and instructional information available from achievement testing programs goes untapped in typical reporting procedures. Large-scale programs reporting only pupil scores and the results of aggregating those scores stop far short of the purposes intended and fail to realize the potential of such information.…

This bulletin is the first in a series of publications on the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) examinations. Suggestions which teachers and examining boards can adopt, modify, or reject are included as well as an explanation of the Councils' adopted policies. Section I - The C. S. E. Examination System discusses the general principles of…

One Midwestern state has chosen a model of state assessment in which local school districts are responsible for developing the strategies to measure and report their students' performance on state-adopted content standards. When students are not measured on common instruments, district accountability becomes an added challenge. This paper presents…

This report discusses the outcomes of a survey that questioned states about their development of alternate assessments for students with disabilities who cannot participate, even with accommodations, in state or district-wide assessment programs. In the survey, states were asked about a variety of developmental features of their alternate…

This publication outlines tests that are included in the North Carolina Testing Program. The end-of-grade tests are curriculum based multiple-choice reading comprehension and mathematics tests that measure curricular competencies described in the North Carolina Standard Course of Study. These tests are administered to all eligible students within…

A critical view of the underlying theoretical rationale of the System of Multicultural Pluralistic Assessment (SOMPA) model for student assessment is presented. The critique is extensive and questions the basic assumptions of the model. (JKS)

In 97 Ohio school districts, 484 teachers and administrators rated their school's standardized testing practices as average or above, compared to school performance in other areas. Highest rated testing practices were related to test quality, pupil records, and understandable scores and reports; lowest rated practice was use of test results to…