Asks several teachers what they have lost from their teaching or their classroom since the growth in mandated, standardized testing. Considers the ill effects of mandated testing, and names some educational essentials at risk of being lost while testing rules. Discusses what is lost in high-stakes multiple-choice testing of new teachers. (SG)

This article examines some problems associated with assessing students with emotional or behavioral disorders (EBD) for special education eligibility. Major issues include over-identification of students as EBD and the continuing overrepresentation of students of minority ethnicity. Movement away from the traditional norm-referenced approach to…

Trends in teacher competency testing, test bias against minority group teachers, and ways to encourage qualified personnel to join the teaching profession are discussed. Currently, 21 states require students to pass a test to enter a teacher education program, and 31 require teacher candidates to pass a certification test. Admission tests include…

The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores of the 1960 to 1974 valedictorians and salutatorians from a sample of public, experimental, and private schools were studied. The experimental schools were specifically chosen for demographic stability. The comparison schools were also selected for stability, but by less stringent criteria. For the…

The following articles and reports are presented in this publication of "Overseas Universities:""Appropriate Technology and University Education," by John Twidell; "The Training of Engineering Staff for Higher Education Institutions in Developing Countries," by D. W. Daniel, C. A. Leal, J. H. Maynes and T. Wilmore;…

Not intended to be a technical piece of work in the sense of psychometric innovation, this volume presents a synthesis and summary of over four hundred highly selected reference sources. The objective is to present a gestalt of the perspectives, pitfalls, fallacies, issues, consequences, and trends in the use of standardized norm-referenced tests…

Errors in item parameter estimates have a negative impact on the accuracy of item and test information functions. The estimation errors may be random, but because items with higher levels of discriminating power are more likely to be selected for a test, and these items are most apt to contain positive errors, the result is that item information…

The question of reliability in the intellectual assessment of young children is cause for concern among developmental psychologists and diagnosticians. The issue of reliability is confounded by normal variability in skills during early childhood, by the problem of consistency across time of age-appropriate assessment measures, and by the selection…

"America 2000," President Bush's national strategy for "Reinventing America's Schools" is evaluated by 30 invited experts in the following papers: "Bottom-up Reform From the Top Down" (John E. Chubb); "Would Choice + Competition Yield Quality Education?" (Richard F. Elmore); "The Federal Education Role…

The present research investigated the claim that certain intellectual characteristics predict attitudes toward multiple-choice tests, particularly the claim that creative persons hold negative attitudes toward these tests. The study examined the relationships between attitudes toward multiple-choice tests and convergent production, divergent…

This document presents a series of five papers describing issues in educational measurement. "A Simple Model for Diagnostic Testing When There Are Several Types of Misinformation" directly addresses the diagnostic issue. It describes a simple latent trait model for testing, examines use of erroneous algorithms, and illustrates the…

Three studies, carried out independently at Ben Gurion University and at Haifa University, tested students of comparable English proficiency who were enrolled in similar courses of English reading comprehension. The studies were carried out to investigate the effect of dictionary use in examinations on students' test performance. In the study at…

Surveys the needs for effective teachers and discusses how tests meet those needs, arguing that differences in test achievement attained by minority applicants need not be attributed to genetic differences, nor should differences in test achievement necessarily be attributed to bias in the tests. (JM)

The purpose of this paper is to describe a set of procedures, that, when carried out, permit the conclusion that a test is a fair measure from the standpoint of specific sub-groups within a test population. A fair test is defined as a test for which a set of data-collection procedures have been carried out and the results reported. (Author/JM)

Issues emerging from a look at student achievement, which is defined in its usual school context as achievement on standardized tests, are addressed. A mythology about standardized testing has developed, in part because the metaphoric languages of medicine and business have been applied to education, defining it in terms of cure, efficiency, and…