Background: Validity is a central concern in any assessment, though this has often not been made explicit in the UK assessment context. This article applies current validity theorising, largely derived from American formulations, to national curriculum assessments in England. Purpose: The aim is to consider validity arguments in relation to the…

Background: National curriculum tests have been administered in England for well over a decade. Although reliability evidence has been published, critics have argued that there is not enough evidence (of the right kind) and that test results may be insufficiently reliable. Purpose: This article collates and discusses evidence on the reliability of…

There are four steps in obtaining test data, each requiring planning and decision-making: assembling students, administering tests, scoring, and recording scores. In assembling students, two cautions are in order. First, for norm referenced tests, students in the treatment group should take the test at the same time of the year as the students in…

An evaluation was conducted of 37 Follow Through classrooms. From each of these classrooms, six students were randomly selected to be administered the Visual Sequencing Task, the Pictorial Self-Concept Scale, the Ladder (a self-concept measure), and the Pupil Attitude Survey. These pupils were also video taped for observation of their activities…

Conclusions reached after three years of performance contracting experience and materials with which to judge the validity of the conclusions are presented in this overview of performance contracting. The conclusions are: (1) commercial firms are no better at teaching children than are public schools; (2) commercial firms expend as much or more…

Examines the continuing controversy on test scores and student achievement in New Jersey. (RK)

Three methods are presented for interpolating fall norms from data derived for tests administered in spring. One method used the midpoint between two spring administrations, the second adjusted for date of fall testing, while the third method used experimental data that showed slower growth rates during the summer months. (CTM)

The Leadership Laboratory for Student Development program, its rationale, objectives, and evaluation findings are discussed. The Leadership Lab, created to prepare a student leader to interact with a variety of people found in the typical school setting, provides students with structured learning experiences that progress from basic communication…

The application of tests in clinical and counseling work, in educational achievement testing, and in personnel selection is discussed. An analysis of the organizations which comprise the testing industry, including the various publishers and developers of tests and also the test scoring organizations, is given. The concept of an assessment system…

This report describes the midterm and final tests administered to pupils in the Quality Assurance classes using the Learning Mastery System (LMS). Results are reported separately for both the Bank Street and Harper & Row versions of LMS. Means, standard deviations, and frequency distributions are given for the subscores and total for each test…

This paper delineates several problems which arise when criterion-referenced test results are used to evaluate the effects of a specific educational treatment. Focus is on these topics: (1) the aggregation of individual students' data on objectives, (2) the sensitivity of the instrument to instruction, (3) the interpretation of…

The third party evaluation report covers the 1974-75 school year, the second year of the demonstration project. Summarized are the background, goals, and objectives of the project. Evaluation is centered upon four major information domains or evaluation areas of interest: student self-concept, student decision-making skills, student relationship…

This report gives the 1990 results of the Primary Assessment Program (PAP). The program monitors achievement in reading and mathematics in urban and Aboriginal schools in the Northern Territory (Australia). It provides feedback to schools on the performance of their students in basic skills and provides indicators of performance for public…

The speeches presented at the second national conference on testing deal with models for program evaluation, reporting of test results, minimum competency programs, and the role of state and federal government in educational testing. Various approaches to program evaluation, and its relationship to testing are described by Michael Scriven, Lee J.…

The practice of analyzing all available project children in as large a group as possible is considered not to be justifiable when distinct subgroups of pupils are represented. Instead, the approach suggested here determines the test score gain a pupil achieves from the beginning to the end of the year, with all of the pupil gain scores of a single…