Based on material prepared for the California Assessment Program, an argument in favor of authentic assessment is presented, and authentic assessment is contrasted with traditional standardized tests. An assessment is authentic when student performance on intellectual tasks is directly examined. Comparatively, traditional assessment relies on…

A procedure used to average several Mantel-Haenszel delta difference values for an item is described and evaluated. The differential item functioning (DIF) procedure used by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) is based on the Mantel-Haenszel statistical technique for studying matched groups. It is standard procedure at ETS to analyze test items…

A research project was conducted in 1982 by Sacramento City College's Assessment Center to evaluate the effectiveness of selected English courses found in three levels of English: English 55 and 56 (the lowest level); English 57 (level two), and English 1A (level three). The study focused on students who had reading and English scores required for…

This study compares the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA) and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) profiles of successful and unsuccessful preschoolers with learning disabilities. Subjects, 40 preschool students, were tested at the beginning and at the end of the preschool year and were placed into repeating or…

In November, 1985, the Council of Chief State School Officers adopted a plan for developing educational indicators. The plan provided for the development of a common measure of student achievement to be collected across states beginning in 1988-89. In order to design a student achievement assessment program, the states were asked to give their…

It has been proposed that the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) increase its efforts to gather and analyze data on student background, teachers, households, and schools. Adoption of this proposal would result in the inclusion in NAEP of additional background variables and subpopulations, to be defined by states. NAEP specification…

This guide is intended to assist vocational rehabilitation counselors in planning and conducting short-term vocational evaluations of clients. The first section discusses the elements that must be included in a comprehensive vocational evaluation. Next, strategies for conducting a vocational evaluation are explained. The next section, a case study…

The final report of the 2-year project describes the development and validation of microcomputer software to help assess reading disabled elementary grade children and to provide basic reading instruction. Accomplishments of the first year included: design of the STAR Neuro-Cognitive Assessment Program which includes a reproduction of…

Public concern about substance abuse, fueled by political and media attention, is causing school administrators to consider a variety of approaches beyond traditional drug education. No procedures, methods, or rules regarding drug testing should be established in the absence of clear school board policy, and no policy decisions should be made…

Contemporary scholars researching the courts' impact on schools would profit from examining the well-funded studies conducted in the 1960s and early 1970s. This article discusses the substance of early judicial impact research and explores its relevance for today. Most 1960s impact studies dealt with United States Supreme Court decisions in three…

The present study investigated relationships between cognitive components of children's sex-role development and the bases of their attributions of sex-stereotypes to a particular gender. Specifically, it was predicted that the number of sex-stereotypes children correctly attributed would be significantly related to gender differences between the…

The Enright Arithmetic Program is a diagnostic-prescriptive program designed to facilitate an effective remedial effort. The program is based on establishing for each student the set of skills that student needs to learn and also identifies the error pattern causing the student's current failure. Practice materials for each needed skill are…

A large and representative 10% sample of classrooms consisting of 1,587 students from a mid-western province in Canada was administered a standardized achievement test battery. This battery consisted of four tests, Reading, Mathematics, Written Expression, and Using Sources of Information. Gender and rural-urban differences in achievement and…

Factor analysis is the traditional method for studying the dimensionality of test data. However, under common conditions, the factor analysis of tetrachoric correlations does not recover the underlying structure of dichotomous data. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the factor analyses of tetrachoric correlations is unlikely to…

Questionnaire data from 81 North Carolina communities were analyzed in 1981 to test the hypothesis that 5 institutional subcategories (education, general community services, transportation, agricultural services, and health and sanitation) exhibit the underlying characteristic of unidimensionality and that they reflect comparable levels of…