The current trend toward site-based management in education, with its accompanying shift toward decision making at the individual school level, means new responsibilities and roles for principals. Principals are now required to be intimately involved in budgeting, personnel recruitment and hiring, selection of curricula and textbooks, and many…

This report describes a program for measuring student growth in the reading and writing process in order to improve achievement. The targeted population consisted of first- and second-grade students in three schools serving two suburban communities, located near a large midwestern city. School enrollment figures were 350, 399, and 669 students.…

A variety of methods are examined that teachers from preschool to graduate school levels can use in assessing their students; the common principles underlying classroom assessment are explored. The first principle is that the primary purpose of classroom assessment is to inform teaching and improve learning. A second principle is that multiple…

As part of a larger study exploring the degree to which the general outcome measurement paradigm might be extended to address assessment issues in secondary mathematics, this study involved determining the degree to which simple performance measures would serve as indicators of general proficiency in mathematics and success in achieving the goals…

Ensuring that new forms of assessment are fair and valid for language minority students is essential for research on assessing the performance of Latino language minority elementary school students engaged in a cooperative learning language arts curriculum in Spanish and English. Strategies for developing performance assessments are described, and…

Each state has the opportunity to participate in Title III of the Goals 2000 Act. To participate, the state must have or develop a comprehensive strategy for improving education on the basis of clear and challenging standards. To assist the states, the Council of Chief State School Officers has prepared this report of baseline information for each…

Many current efforts to develop large-scale science assessments involve hands-on tasks because of their presumed power to elicit and measure scientific reasoning skills. An analysis of the processes in which students engage while responding to such assessment is needed in order to discover the specific forms of reasoning that tasks elicit. This…

This book guides teachers on using portfolios and authentic assessment to create reflective students and teachers through specific instruction, examples, and descriptions of many actual elementary school classrooms, teachers, and students who use this approach. Authentic assessment allows students to participate actively in their own learning.…

This paper describes paradigms for research into school learning conducted at the primary/secondary and tertiary levels. Paradigms discussed include the Process-Product paradigm, the Mediating Process paradigm, the Classroom Ecology paradigm, J. Carroll's Model of School Learning, B. Bloom's Mastery Learning model, and the multilevel causal…

The approach to assessment taken by the Colorado Springs (Colorado) Public Schools is outlined. Colorado Springs has taken a position similar to that advocated by the National Council on Educational Standards, that of multiple means of assessment applied in a dynamic and responsive manner. This approach in Colorado Springs is called Purpose Driven…

At one of a series of hearings on H.R. 6, the Elementary and Secondary Education Amendments of 1993, several experts discussed issues related to national assessment, assessment in Chapter 1, and state efforts to develop new forms of assessment. Eleanor Chelimsky, Assistant Comptroller General for Program Evaluation and Methodology of the General…

This paper makes a case for the development of several indirect indicators of national progress in reaching the collegiate attainment objective of the National Education Goals of 1990. These indicators would be developed concurrently with a proposed performance-based assessment to be administered to a national sample of graduating college seniors.…

College-level assessment efforts in New Jersey are described. For more than a dozen years, students in public colleges and universities in New Jersey have been assessed using a common statewide instrument, the New Jersey College Basic Skills Placement Test. This test assesses reading, writing, and mathematics skills of entering college students as…

The research evidence supporting current beliefs in testing is summarized, and critical qualities that good assessment should exemplify and the current state of the research knowledge on how to produce good assessment are reviewed. Research has demonstrated the difficulties of achieving meaningful improvement in schools and the shortcomings of…

Industrial and organizational psychologists for the Department of Defense have been working for the past 10 years to develop high fidelity measures of job performance for use in validating job selection procedures and standards. Information on developing and scoring performance exercises in the Job Performance Measurement (JPM) Project is…