Issues associated with the ACT (American College Testing) Assessment Program illustrate the need to assess college entrance examinations in terms of the variety of common predictive uses such as estimation of first year grade point average (GPA), or chances of obtaining a C average after certain semesters or in specific courses. Test developers…

The "D" testing program, the fourth in a year-long series of test administrations, is summarized. As part of the Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study, reading and mathematics achievement was studied in second and fifth grade classes. The samples for the "D" testing were 97 second grade students out of l50 in the "A" testing, and 89 fifth grade…

The activities and results of the first year of a two-year student assessment pilot program are described, based on a 1978 mandate by the Kansas Legislature requiring the development of minimum competency objectives in the areas of reading and mathematics for students in grades 2, 4, 6, 8, and 11 and instruments for assessing those competencies.…

Criticisms of norm referenced standardized tests are contrasted with the assumption and claims of proponents of Rasch model testing and item banking. The Rasch test theory model is based on the assumption of equal interval curriculum referenced scales for both students' abilities and test item difficulties. The Portland school district has…

This program of research has three general thrusts. First, the relations between motivation and achievement performance were studied across children of various sociocultural backgrounds including lower- and middle- class white, black, and hispanic children. Motivational test bias was found to be strong for students of all sociocultural…

This report consists of three sections, the first of which is a discussion of placement testing. It is maintained that the strengths and weaknesses of a tested population cannot be determined by a single composite test--yet, many institutions place students in beginning courses on the basis of such limited information. To assess basic capabilities…

This paper presents a study of the relationship between scores on the Bayley measures of mental and motor development administered at 8 months of age and performance on measures of cognitive development and school achievement administered at ages 4, 5, 6, and 7. Also studied are changes in this relationship which occur when children with extreme…

Much of the intrinsic wealth of planning and instructional information available from achievement testing programs goes untapped in typical reporting procedures. Large-scale programs reporting only pupil scores and the results of aggregating those scores stop far short of the purposes intended and fail to realize the potential of such information.…

Three propositions which may suggest a strategy for meeting the measurement needs of education are presented: (1) Educational measurement possesses enough techniques and principles to permit tackling problems for their intrinsic importance, rather than for their convenience of fit to answers we already have; (2) Measurement needs are a subset of…

This bulletin is the first in a series of publications on the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) examinations. Suggestions which teachers and examining boards can adopt, modify, or reject are included as well as an explanation of the Councils' adopted policies. Section I - The C. S. E. Examination System discusses the general principles of…

Measurement is presented here as a means of enabling health and physical education programs to assume their place as indispensible phases of the educational process. Measurement is considered vital to health and physical education programs; teachers in these fields are admonished to turn to measurement activities as readily and as naturally as…

The absence of a uniform system of education in the United States is accompanied by freedom in testing. Two types of testing procedures are described: the multi-level standardized tests produced by the Educational Testing Service and experimental use of the cloze procedure. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

Most people seem to think the test will lead to improvement in education. Teachers, however, feel they are being made scapegoats and blacks feel that one crop of eleventh graders is being punished for not being able to make up in one year what they haven't learned in eleven. (Author/IRT)

The faculties of the postsecondary institutions in Florida, using the authority of the State Board of Education, have implemented a testing program that increases the assurance that all students who complete their sophomore year in college have achieved the communication and computation skills expected of them. (Author/MLW)