The Florida Writing Assessment was implemented in grades 4, 8, and 10 in 1998 as required by the Florida legislature. The assessment is designed to measure students' proficiency in writing responses to assigned topics within a designated testing period. This report contains writing assessment results for the whole state, school districts, and…

South Carolina's Basic Skills Assessment Program (BSAP) assesses basic skills in reading, mathematics, writing, and science for grades 3, 6, 8, and 10 (exit examination). In 1998, the tests were administered statewide in April. This report provides 3 years of data on percentages of students meeting state standards. The data are reported by…

In the United States, large-scale assessment is beginning to be used to promote educational system accountability and improvement. Widespread dissatisfaction with student outcomes and public schooling is fueling the search for alternative assessments as a part of educational reform. (SLD)

Four threats to validity of an alternative objective test item format, the multiple-mark format, were studied with data from a state-mandated assessment with about 30,000 students at each of three grade levels. Reliability and validity coefficients show that the format has promise as an objective format that can be aligned with new curriculum…

Issues related to the development of test items to assess pedagogical content knowledge for an elementary school licensure test are discussed. The subject test is the Connecticut Elementary Education Certification Examination. Several items useful for assessing pedagogical content knowledge are described. (TJH)

The Learning Outcome Testing Program of the West Virginia Department of Education is designed to provide public school teachers/administrators with test questions matching learning outcomes. The approach, software selection, results of pilot tests with teachers in 13 sites, and development of test items for item banks are described. (SLD)

The Tennessee value-added assessment system (TVAAS) is described. TVAAS is a statistical process measuring the influence which school systems, schools, and teachers have on indicators of student learning. Initially, TVAAS will furnish information at the system level for grades three through eight in math, science, reading, language, and social…

Two perspectives on assessment for teacher certification are described: the competency orientation, and the professional orientation. These perspectives are used to discuss current problems, basically validity issues, in teacher assessment: (1) a professional orientation toward assessment; (2) criterion-referenced assessments; and (3) the unit of…

This volume provides the background of the Kentucky Education Reform Act and discusses the assessment and evaluation principles on which it is based. It reviews early steps in implementation of the Act's mandates, but was written before most of the battles of implementation had begun. (SLD)

Summarizes the recent history of education reform and statewide testing in Texas. Suggest that analyses comparing Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) reading, writing, and mathematics scores with one another and relevant high school grades raise doubts about the reliability and validity of TAAS scores. Discusses these problems. (SLD)

In the context of the development of a possible national mathematics assessment, a study was conducted to determine whether a test item characterization scheme could be created based on a state policy document that serves as the driving force behind large-scale performance assessment. Further considerations were whether such an item…

Twelve teachers and two principals from the Addison Northeast Supervisory Union School District (Vermont) met to consider what a small rural school district can do to assess its own programs and to discuss how to go about program assessment with the goal of helping schools become effective learning organizations. The district serves about 1,800…

Tests can be categorized into two major groups: norm-referenced tests (NRTs) and criterion-referenced tests (CRTs). NRTs are designed to highlight achievement differences between and among students to produce a dependable rank order of students across a continuum of achievement from high achievers to low achievers. With NRTs, a representative…

Norm-referenced tests (NRT) help compare the performance of one student with the performances of a large group of students, while criterion-referenced tests (CRT) focus on "what test takers can do and what they know, not how they compare to others" (Anastasi, 1988). Both types of test can be standardized so that scores can be interpreted the same…

This practice test for the Ohio Ninth-grade Proficiency Tests consists of items similar to those that appear on the proficiency test. The writing section contains a prompt that asks the student to write about a hero or heroine. The reading test contains questions based on four reading selections and other reading skill questions not based on a…