The backlash against the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was raised to a new level when Connecticut's attorney general announced that his state plans to sue the U.S. Department of Education over the testing mandates in the sweeping federal law. In announcing his intentions, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said he was inviting other states to…

The Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA; 2004) permitted lack of students' response to intervention (RTI) to be considered as a basis for documenting specific learning disabilities (SLD). The previous method of detecting SLD, which relied on IQ and achievement testing, consequently is no longer mandatory.…

Tests are a natural part of education, from the quizzes, essays, and classroom tests that teachers have traditionally administered to the high-stakes tests that states use to make decisions about graduation, promotion, and school funding and governance. In this article, the author stresses the need to learn the unintended consequences of…

With the arrival of calendar year 2004, there are some New Year's Resolutions that, if thoroughly considered, might make schools and districts more hospitable to children, parents and teachers. Everyone desires high standards, but the current path to achieving them is affecting the art of teaching while causing considerable stress and anxiety in…

The purpose of this study was to revise and develop a coping checklist for sport. A higher order factor (engagement and disengagement coping) was identified to examine coping in sport situations. A revised 50-item Ways of Coping Checklist (WCC) was administered to 106 female athletes immediately after they had participated in a sport competition.…

Context and Purpose: This study examined the predictors of HIV testing and factors associated with intention to accept a free HIV test among 244 Hispanic migrant/seasonal farmworkers in South Florida. Methods: Time and space sampling procedures were used to recruit participants in public venues. Bilingual staff interviewed eligible respondents in…

Researched in the narrative inquiry tradition, this article examines the influence of state-mandated accountability testing on Eagle High School's dramatically shifting context and the embodied knowledge held and expressed by principal, Henry Richards, and the Eagle teachers. Through carefully unpacking Richards's dragon in school backyards…

Policy makers have focused on promoting test-based accountability systems as a tool for correcting a wide variety of educational problems, including low standards, weak motivation, poor curriculum and instruction, inadequate learning, and educational equity. This article argues that the appropriateness of testing, or any other form of assessment,…

In four experiments, 4-, 5-, 6- and 9-year-old children and adults were tested on the entrenchment of their magical beliefs and their beliefs in the universal power of physical causality. In Experiment 1, even 4-year-olds showed some understanding of the difference between ordinary and anomalous (magical) causal events, but only 6-year-olds and…

Two early publications are often cited as the genesis of the language testing field: (1) Lado's (1961) book on language testing; and (2) Carroll's (1961) fundamental considerations paper. The former is the first textbook on assessing foreign language ability. The latter is the first true statement of theory. The former is the first publication to…

The Internet has opened up a whole new set of opportunities for advancing the science of psychometrics and the technology of testing. It has also created some new challenges for those of us involved in test design and testing. In particular, we are seeing impacts from internationalization of testing and new models for test delivery. These are…

In 1993, Rauscher et al. reported a temporary increase in spatial-temporal ability after listening to Mozart's music. This led to numerous replication and extension studies with mixed findings in the past decade. This study investigated the "Mozart effect" in preschool children. Forty-one boys and girls, aged three to five, attempted a series of…

Patterns of individual scores are used to critique citywide testing of urban children at the beginning of their schooling. Of the 47 children identified as gifted in a citywide assessment, 25 exhibited substantial intra individual differences between skill subscales on a standardized intelligence test. Eighty percent of the children had a…

Decreases in behavioral investigation of novel stimuli over time may be mediated by a variety of factors including changes in attention, internal state, and motivation. Sensory cortical adaptation, a decrease in sensory cortical responsiveness over prolonged stimulation, may also play a role. In olfaction, metabotropic glutamate receptors on…

In 1995, New York State Education Commissioner Richard Mills and the Board of Regents changed the state's testing policy in favor of a challenging, high-stakes testing accountability system. The case describes Mill's leadership over the next six years in the face of significant opposition from parents, alternative schools, vocational educators,…