As a result of this study, the following statement will be included in the 1973-74 ACT Supervisor's Manual of Instructions: Test center supervisors are encouraged to enlist room supervisors and proctors that reflect the racial, ethnic, and sex ratios of the examinees.'' (Author)

Presents responses of eight teachers concerning the effects of mandated testing. Describes how the teachers cope with the problems raised by mandated tests. (RS)

Barbara Jordan served as the hearing officer for three-day adversary evaluation hearings about the pros and cons of minimum competency testing (MCT). This report is the complete transcript of the first day of proceedings. James Popham and George Madaus presented the opening arguments for the pro team and con team, respectively. Michael Scriven,…

Reviews and critiques the British system of public examinations. (AA)

Reviews a dozen basic questions about passing scores on state-mandated competency testing programs for students, teachers, administrators, and other education personnel. Condemns the "cardiac" approach (or traditonal 80 percent standard) in favor of procedures that systematically incorporate judgment with a variety of performance data.…

Interviewed testing coordinators in 20 New Jersey public schools to identify and describe current practices and problems in testing program content, planning, and participation; test selection and scheduling; preparation of test administrators and test takers; and test scoring, recording, and reporting. (JAC)

Teachers and test professionals must work together for responsible measurement in English to take place. Traditionally, they have refused to do so, a situation that has led to serious problems in at least three areas: research in the teaching of writing, classroom practice in teaching revision of writing, and some testing practices by such…

Presents some specific questions that educators ought to raise about standardized tests and some alternatives to standardized tests. (Author/IRT)

The Wisconsin legislature has required the Department of Public Instruction to adopt or approve standardized tests for statewide use to measure student attainment of knowledge and concepts in grades 4, 8, and 10. Although school districts generally gave high ratings to the contents of TerraNova (McGraw Hill), the testing instrument most recently…

Addresses the tension between the two assessment goals of measurement and instruction and how they relate to standardized testing in general. Suggests that this tension is writ large in Australia's current literacy-policy environment, with the scales tipping to the measurement goal. Argues that these goals need to be aligned in the best interests…

Rescoring of Center for Occupational and Professional Assessment objective-referenced tests is decided largely by content experts selected by client organizations. A few of the test items, statistically flagged for review, are not rescored. Some of this incongruence could be due to the use of the biserial correlation (r-biserial) as an…

The implementation of a district-wide testing program requires careful consideration of credibility issues. These issues have been frequently overlooked or treated casually by test developers and users alike. It is well enough to study the reliability and validity issues involved when selecting instrumentation. It is also necessary to identify…

A pretest-posttest design for measuring the effects of educational programs uses comparison groups consisting of pupils like those in the treatment group but not getting that particular treatment. Although the design is geared primarily to evaluation of Title I programs in large cities, it should also apply to other situations. The plan for…

Instruments and methods are considered by many the nuts and bolts of school testing programs, for both individuals and groups. Too often, the individual is lost in the machinery of such a school program, and data collected becomes the end product of appraisal and assessment. Programs of student appraisal procedures should be developed around eight…

Although emphatically not against the concept of educational accountability, the National Education Association (NEA) feels that a redirection is needed in the implementation of such a system. Because of error, especially in testing minority and poor children, accountability programs should never use test results as the major source of data but…