Low income and middle income four- and five-year old children were shown stimuli in three forms: objects, colored pictures, and black and white line drawings taken from commonly used assessment instruments, and were asked to label the stimuli. Results indicated both groups of children labeled the objects more successfully than the pictures.…

Noting that the practitioner is confronted with conflicting definitions of "fairness" that claim to avoid "bias" in test usage, this article asserts that "mean fairness" can be achieved by use of multiple regression with the dichotomous variate, group membership, included as a predictor; mean fairness also holds for sub-groupings, based on test…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, in its power base, conception, creation, and execution, runs against the view that respects the local, unique culture as the prime determinant in education and supports the idea that education is an entity that a national program can clarify for delivery to children. (Author/IRT) Aspect of National…

Responding to publicity about declining computation scores on standardized tests, the author conducted a study comparing October with May testing and timed with untimed tests. He concluded that students today are able to compute but do so more slowly than earlier students and earn higher scores on applications and concepts. (SD)

The consumer of educational tests is not being protected and reforms are badly needed. (JH)

Results indicate that students possessing an external locus of control contracted for and ultimately earned lower grades, began working more slowly, reported more state anxiety during oral assessments, and performed more poorly on a written final examination than their more internally oriented peers. (Author)

The secondary level English proficiency (SLEP) test is a group administered 150 item multiple-test of English language proficiency that includes two subscores and eight different item types. It is designed to assess a foreign student's readiness for English medium instruction at the secondary level. This paper reports on two studies which were…

This document contains three papers from the Test Use Project of the Center for the Study of Evaluation. A preliminary assessment model is described in the first paper, "Contextual Examination of Test Use: The Test, the Setting, the Cost" by J. Herman and J. Yeh. Empirical findings are sought about the nature of testing and its actual…

Three questions were addressed by this study: (1) Do the Ebel, Nedelsky, and Angoff methods of setting minimum competency standards produce different cutting scores for the same test? (2) When utilized by raters of different competencies, do these methods result in different Standards? and (3) Are the standards set by the different methods the…