Three experiments were conducted, all employing undergraduates in college courses taught according to personalized system of instruction (PSI) principles. Experiment I examined retention as a function of the feedback delay interval in an introductory anthropology course using short-answer essay tests. Experiment II varied the feedback delay…

This paper compares the decision-making strategies which have been incorporated in the Teacher Performance Assessment Instruments in Georgia and the Assessments of Performance in Teaching developed for use in South Carolina. Although both instruments are designed for use with beginning teachers, the decision-making structure of these two…

The United States Employment Service is now able to expand the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) coverage from approximately 400 jobs to all candidates for every job in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (over 12,000 occupations). In addition, employers can now receive more useful feedback on applicants. Instead of reporting whether a…

Issues emerging from a look at student achievement, which is defined in its usual school context as achievement on standardized tests, are addressed. A mythology about standardized testing has developed, in part because the metaphoric languages of medicine and business have been applied to education, defining it in terms of cure, efficiency, and…

The contribution of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) to education is described, and the most frequently asked questions about its use are addressed. The SAT became a prominent tool in college admissions when the members of the College Board recognized in the 1930's that the Board's program of very specific subject-matter tests was no longer…

The Tests of General Educational Development (GED Tests) are described. Developed in 1942 for military personnel who had not graduated from high school, the GED Tests enabled veterans to qualify for jobs or enter college. More than 10 million persons have earned GED Test diplomas since 1971. There are five parts to the GED Tests: (1) Writing…

To assess teachers' grading and other evaluation practices and policies in Ohio, a 79-item questionnaire was administered to 258 elementary and secondary school teachers, and 137 other teachers were interviewed by college students taking an educational assessment class. The typical teacher assigned term grades of "A" or "B" to…

This volume presents papers that dicusss the need for more systematic and rigorous research programs to monitor the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines and their various implementations. "A Progress Report on the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines, 1982-1986" (David V. Hiple), traces the…

A brief overview is presented of the current status of mandatory testing in the United States, and of some of the problems involved. While the testing of teacher candidates is generally approved, both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association oppose the testing of veteran teachers. It is suggested that leadership…

It is argued that the close relationship between learning and testing is best exemplified in achievement tests, which are designed both to reinforce learning and to provide feedback about the effectiveness of teaching. Of the four types of achievement tests (placement, formative, diagnostic, and summative), two (formative and diagnostic) are…

The linguistic bases for bilingual education (i.e, the nature of language, the structures of the native and target languages in a bilingual education program, and the way the two language systems interact) need to be examined and understood as a sound basis for administrative and pedagogical decisions and procedures in the programs. Linguistics is…

The paper reviews the ways in which the cloze testing procedure measures the reading comprehension skills of students in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. The construction and scoring of the test and the interpretation of the scores are discussed and the reliability and validity of the cloze procedure for testing reading skills…

A basic understanding of criterion-referenced test (CRT) use and development is presented with definitions and characteristics of CRTs. The steps necessary to construct and validate a CRT, the appropriate use of CRTs, the historical development of CRTs, and terms used in conjunction with CRTs are discussed. The most common definition of a CRT is a…

The Maryland State Department of Education issued a request for proposals to develop a score reporting system for the Maryland Functional Testing Program. RMC Research Corporation conducted a literature review of extant literature and developed a national survey of non-norm-referenced test score reporting practices. This comprehensive analysis of…

This paper proposes that instructional validity (i.e., the extent to which teachers actually teach the skills that are tested) should be part of the test development process. The development of a district-wide ninth-grade math exam for General Mathematics I (GMI) in the Charleston County School District, South Carolina, is used to illustrate how a…