This manual for examiners administering the Primary Test of Economic Understanding (PTEU) describes the purpose, development, and validity of the test which is designed to provide a measure of students' growth and a means to assess the effectiveness of existing materials, teaching strategies, and pre-service and in-service economics education…

Discusses Delgado Community College's new approach to student services, which has aligned the college's fundamental academic testing and placement functions with expanded career advisement and job placement services to create a logical progression of services. Highlights the roles of the Developmental Studies and Human Development Department and…

The instructional strategies teachers and other school personnel have used in the successful remediation of students who have failed reading and writing portions of the Virginia Literacy Passport Test (LPT) or the LPT Predictor Test were studied. The intent was to determine if specific approaches seem to work best for different types of students…

A state superintendent of education discusses standards from the point of view of a policymaker, acknowledging both educational and political elements. The objective for the policymaker is to take the work of researchers and educational theorists and make it something that practitioners and ultimately the public can understand. The first thing is…

By 2008, according to this policy brief, half the states are likely to have adopted high-school exit exams. These exams, which students must pass to graduate, are part of state accountability systems and are above and beyond the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. This brief discusses high-school exit exams. It begins with answers to…

The Delaware Student Testing Program ties student achievement to the state's content standards that define the knowledge and skills Delaware students need to succeed beyond high school. This report explains the testing program and how to interpret it for administrators and boards of education. Each school receives English language and mathematics…

The Delaware Student Testing Program ties student achievement to the state's content standards that define the knowledge and skills Delaware students need to succeed beyond high school. This report explains the testing program to teachers and presents a guide to interpreting test results. Section 1 introduces the testing program, which tests…

This report provides important state-by-state information on the characteristics and performance of schools and students in each state, information that is vital to monitoring the progress and evaluating the success of local, state, and national education reforms. The report disaggregates student achievement data so that attention can be focused…

This document reports the levels of skill achievement by Florida students as measured by the High School Competency Test (HSCT) and explains the purpose, reporting, and use of HSCT test results. This test measures the ability of students to apply basic skills in communication and mathematics successfully in everyday life situations. Students in…

The 1997-98 school year was the 18th year of statewide student testing under the Arizona Student Achievement Program mandated by Arizona law. For the 1997-98 school year, students in grades 3 through 12 were tested using the Stanford Achievement Test, Ninth Edition (Stanford 9). This test was administered statewide to 536,254 Arizona students in…

Correlations of National Teacher Examination (NTE) Core Battery scores and college grade point average (GPA) with a measure of teaching effectiveness for 493 first-year teachers indicate that the correlation is higher for GPA than for the Core Battery. NTE core scores do not predict effectiveness better than GPA alone. (SLD)

Explores issues of whose work is actually being evaluated when raters outside the classroom context make judgments about students based on work composed with the support of peers, teachers, and parents. Data from an evaluation of a statewide assessment and a study of scoring elementary school writing portfolios illustrate the issues. (SLD)

Washington State University (WSU), has developed two large-scale assessment programs to evaluate student learning outcomes. The largest, the Writing Assessment Program, diagnoses student writing abilities at entry and mid-career to determine the type of support needed to navigate the expectations of our writing-rich curriculum. The second, the…

A needs assessment determined Oregon community college staff knowledge of (a) accessible information technology (IT) guidelines, (b) IT-related disability laws, (c) legal obligations regarding Web accessibility, and (d) perceived level of current Web accessibility. Training needs were assessed and training suggestions were solicited. IT staff…

The aim of this study is to explore the possibility of creating positive washback by focusing on factors in the background of the test development process and anticipating the conditions most likely to lead to positive wash-back. The article reports on a multiphase empirical study investigating the washback effects of a needs-based test of spoken…