In order to evaluate standard setting procedures, apart from the more commonly applied approach of simply comparing the derived standards or failure rates across various techniques, this study investigated the errors of classification associated with the contrasting groups procedures. Monte Carlo simulations were employed to produce…

Reported in this monograph are the results from a survey of composition teachers in the City University of New York (CUNY). The questionnaire used for the survey sought (1) to obtain quantitative data about teachers' instructional practices and about their perceptions of the impact of the Writing Skills Assessment Test (WSAT) of minimum writing…

An overview is provided of curriculum management and "mapping," an auditing technique for assessing the content, time, and sequence of the taught curriculum as reported by the teacher. The general notion of management is first discussed in terms of three basic kinds of activities: defining purpose and mission, configuring available…

In circumstances where judges are required to make ratings of performance, it is usually required to have two or more raters who are trained to agree on independent ratings of the same performance. It is suggested that such a requirement may produce the paradox of attenuation associated with item analysis, in which too high a correlation between…

Two national surveys on graduation requirements and transition services for students with handicaps are briefly described. The first study, "State Graduation Policies and Program Practices Related to High School Special Education Programs" by Joanne Records Bodner et al., surveyed state special education directors or their designees in 50 states…

A geography skills test was administered to over 3,000 Indiana college students enrolled in introductory geography courses in 1987. The National Council for Geographic Education Competency-Based Geography Test, Secondary Level, Form D, was used to measure geographic ability in the area of map skills, place name location, physical geography, and…

A major barrier to minority student participation in the Arizona State University teacher preparation program is the state-mandated requirement that all sections of the PreProfessional Skills Test (PPST) be passed before any teacher preparation courses can be taken. This paper describes the significant features of a minority recruitment/support…

A study supplementing earlier research by Lalande and Schweckendiek investigated comparisons and correlations obtained from testing a group of 17 university students of German using both the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and the most recent revision of the examination for the…

This paper describes what in the area of assessment is essential knowledge for a prospective teacher. The listings of topics which would be relevant for a course in measurement for preservice teachers are presented as they might appear in a course syllabus. For each topic, the rationnale for its inclusion is given, as well as the skills which…

Gagne proposed in his learning hierarchy model that a final task could not be performed by an individual who does not have the subordinate skills, and that any superordinate task involved in the hierarchy of skill building could be performed by an individual provided suitable instructions were given, and provided the relevant subordinate knowledge…

In February, 1988, random samples of students from five countries (Ireland, Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and four Canadian provinces (British Columbia, New Brunswick, Ontario, and Quebec) were given an assessment of mathematics and science achievement, and a questionnaire. This document summarizes the results of these…

The process of writing test items is analyzed, and a blueprint is presented for an authoring system for test item writing to reduce invalidity and to structure the process of item writing. The developmental methodology is introduced, and the first steps in the process are reported. A historical review traces the advances made in the field and the…

Four discussions of test construction based on item response theory (IRT) are presented. The first discussion, "Test Design as Model Building in Mathematical Programming" (T. J. J. M. Theunissen), presents test design as a decision process under certainty. A natural way of modeling this process leads to mathematical programming. General…

Some central issues in discussions of creative processes in science are: (1) the mechanism(s) by which hypothesis formation takes place; (2) the sources of new knowledge during hypothesis formation; and (3) the "Eureka" versus steady accumulation (accretion) issue concerning the pace of change during hypothesis formation. This paper…

Gender differences were examined on three computer-administered spatial processing tasks: (1) the Intercept task, requiring processing dynamic or moving figures; (2) the mental rotation test, employing rotated asymmetric polygons; and (3) the integrating details test, in which subjects performed a complex visual synthesis. Participants were about…