This handbook describes the responsibilities of district and school assessment coordinators in the administration of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA). This updated guidebook contains the following sections: (1) General Assessment Guidelines for All Assessments; (2) Writing Specific Guidelines; (3) Reading and Mathematics…

Research on globalization and education involves the study of intertwined worldwide discourses, processes, and institutions affecting local educational practices and policies. The four major theoretical perspectives concerning globalization and education are world culture, world systems, postcolonial, and culturalist. The major global educational…

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…

This study considers the use of repeaters when test equating. The subjects consist of five groups of applicants to a professional certification program. Each group comprises first time examinees and repeaters. The procedures include a common item linear equating with nonrandom groups, use of equating chains, and the use of total examinee group…

The innovators of a functional level testing program must make decisions in the context of situational factors. There are several decision points involving the important elements of a testing program. Establishing the need for functional level testing is the first decision to be made. A systematic examination of in-level test data will document…

The Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills, Form U, is scored in two ways: number-correct and pattern. The latter makes use of the information about which particular items are answered correctly, giving more weight to the more discriminating items and making allowances for guessing. Critics have suggested that black students are penalized by pattern…

Careful management of a testing program can greatly limit a teacher's opportunity to cheat while administering standardized tests to students and can increase the likelihood that such cheating will be detected. The Austin Independent School District's systemwide testing staff's plan for controlling cheating has three basic premises: (1) plan and…

This paper focuses on item design considerations faced by instructional designers and evaluators when using computer videodisc delivery systems as a means of assessing learner comprehension and competencies. Media characteristics of various interactive computer/videodisc training systems are briefly discussed as well as reasons for using such…

A history of teacher testing in South Carolina was presented to serve as a context within which the current teacher evaluation system might be interpreted. Legislation in 1940 mandated that renewal of certificates and issuance of new certificates to teachers be predicated upon the applicant's completion of a comprehensive and objective…

Based on 18 months of extensive research and study, the New Mexico State Department of Education developed the Staff Accountability Plan to address the issue of teacher accountability and certification. One of the provisions of the plan (a written assessment of general and professional knowledge for initial certification) will be fulfilled by…

The Connecticut Assessment of Educational Progress (CAEP) is designed to provide legislators and educators with information on the strengths and weaknesses of students in 11 curricula areas. In addition, the Educational Evaluation and Remedial Assistance (EERA) program was developed to assess student proficiency in the basic skills of reading,…

This handbook, intended for General Educational Development Test (GED) examiners, was designed to cover many of the issues and problems unique to the GED testing program in California. Six chapters are included: (1) testing center authorization and responsibilities; (2) testing center staff; (3) testing fees and materials; (4) test administration;…

Administering a large scale licensing examination program presents both technical and non-technical challenges. Five major areas are discussed in this paper: (1) ensuring test validity in relation to occupational entry standards; (2) developing test items from valid examination specifications; (3) establishing legally defensible passing scores;…

Divided into two sections, this report describes research on the range and degree of assessment of students' communication skills in colleges and universities and includes the following findings: (1) of the 384 respondents from college speech communication departments, 45 reported using large-scale, uniform testing of students; (2) these…

The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss some of the problems presented by the use of computerized adaptive testing (CAT) in an instructional programs environment versus large scale testing applications, and to describe an actual implementation of CAT in an instructional programs setting. This particular application is in the…