This collection is based on the fact that employment, housing, and consumer rights and opportunities are often inextricably linked and mutually dependent. The papers explore aspects of creating a national report card on discrimination, assessing the role that testing and other social science methodologies might play in its formulation. The papers…

This guide is designed to give the student helpful information about Arizona's Instrument To Measure the Standards (AIMS) for high school. The guide provides examples of the type of questions students see on AIMS and explains how items are scored. It does not teach what the student needs to know to do well on AIMS, but it will help the student…

The use of portfolios in assessing student achievement is contrasted with the use of standardized tests. Portfolios are considered more subjective than scores from standardized tests, and they present different issues in assessing and reporting student progress. Interscorer reliability may be a problem because of a lack of agreement about the…

The Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) was a major new initiative in the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS), North Carolina, in 2000. The ALP was designed to help WCPSS meet its achievement goal of 95% of students scoring at or above grade level at grades 3 and 8 by 2003, with grade levels determined by the North Carolina End of Grade tests.…

Texas students have made extraordinarily large gains on statewide achievement tests, the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS), gains so dramatic that they have been dubbed the "Texas miracle." There is general agreement that these gains are attributable to the high stakes accountability system in Texas, but there is some question…

Because districts in Nebraska are not measured on common instruments, comparisons are difficult. This study examined a district evaluation strategy that classifies districts into school performance ratings (SPR) based on a combination of three factors. Student performance and non-cognitive indicator data for three grade levels and two content…

In the year 2000, the Alaska High School Graduation Qualifying Examination (HSGQE) was given for the first time. The HSGQE is currently scheduled to be a graduation requirement for all students graduating as of January 2002, but early results from the use of the HSGQE in the Anchorage school district raise serious questions about the use of the…

This report contains aggregate and disaggregated state-level results from administrations of North Carolina's computer skills tests (performance and multiple choice) in 2000-2001. The report also provides limited information about the performance of school districts and charter schools. Additional data are included in this report about the…

In the context of controversy over the use of high stakes testing, the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) asked for an evaluation of the performance levels and cut score of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) mathematics and reading tests. While awaiting technical documentation from the Pennsylvania Department of…

This study modeled school and district effects in the mathematics scores of the Delaware Student Testing Program (DSTP) using hierarchical linear modeling. Three-level hierarchical models were fitted to estimate school and district effects in the DSTP mathematics scores and to examine the school and district variance with variables assessing…

This document presents testimonies from a hearing discussing the drug threat in the nations schools and the issue of whether drug testing is an effective deterrent. The subcommittee conducted the hearing as part of an effort to fully understand the nations drug crisis, how it impacts different parts of our nation, and what effective drug control…

This article explores whether or not it is possible for computers to be effectively used to analyze textual information. Computerization of human linguistic analysis would be enormously useful, because it would relieve many highly skilled linguistics professionals (researchers and teachers) from having to spend enormous amounts of time on the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in foreign language reading comprehension among high-, middle-, and low-ambiguity tolerance students. The subjects for the study were 150 English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) university students randomly drawn from all freshmen enrolled in the English section at four schools of education in…

This paper examines the discriminative validity of the Learning Efficiency Test II (LET-II; Webster, 1998) in distinguishing among children diagnosed as having ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) only, ADHD and an accompanying learning disability, ADHD-predominantly inactive type, and a control group. Children (N=132) between the ages…

This report discusses outcomes of a study of assessment directors and transition specialists from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia on exit documents available to and graduation requirements for students with and without disabilities. Results indicate: (1) approximately 80 percent of the states have alternative exit documents for…