The purpose of this study was to construct regression models that can identify sources of desired or undesired influences on student ratings. The approach uses course effectiveness findings developed with regression models to identify a possible solution to the two problems in using student ratings as a major component of course effectiveness: (1)…

Continuing education students are usually mature students who have a wealth of experience from which their peers and the lecturer could profit. An effective teaching method with such students is the use of cooperative work assignments, but a problem that prevents lecturers from using this method is the difficulty of assigning grades to individual…

This technical report focuses on the decision-making potential provided by second language performance assessments. First, performance assessment is situated within the broader discussion of alternatives in language assessment and in educational assessment in general. Next, issues in performance assessment design, implementation, reliability, and…

This paper focuses on how best to evaluate student achievement in science. Many issues such as issues of test construction, validity, and reliability, and how to measure hands-on achievement must be considered. Qualitative evaluations are harder to explain, but can yield valuable information. The use of portfolios is an example of a technique that…

The purposes of this study were to devise and provide validity and reliability data for scores on an instrument measuring attitudes toward school violence and to develop importance ratings of the items based on data from teachers in a high school that had experienced a highly publicized violent episode. Two independent samples were used. Based on…

This study investigated preservice, inservice, and college teachers' reasons for making assessment and grading decisions. A survey examined their perspectives about a case study that presented a grading dilemma in which a teacher, "Sarah", assigned grades based on criteria that were potentially invalid and unreliable. Participants analyzed the…

To analyze perceptions of what constitutes a safe school. different perceptions of what constitutes a safe school, an assessment of the first 4 years of North Carolina's Annual Report on School Violence (ARSV) is reported here. The ARSV is a collection of data on specific acts of violence occurring on school property. Data on acts of violence were…

This study validated the Student Oral Proficiency Assessment (SOPA), an oral proficiency instrument designed for students in elementary foreign language programs. Elementary students who were tested with the SOPA were also administered other instruments designed to measure proficiency. These instruments included the Stanford Foreign Language Oral…

This book originated from a conference arranged to honor the professional contributions of William D. Schafer on his retirement. In recognition of his interest in the subject, each chapter is an effort by one or more professionals to describe what they think the future of assessment should be. The chapters are: (1) What Will Teachers Know about…

This paper investigates the validity of two current approaches for estimating text difficulty at the first-grade level--the Scale for Text Accessibility and Support-Grade 1 (STAS-1) and the Fountas/ Pinnell system--and analyzed student performance in relation to each. Subjects, 105 first graders in two schools, used "little books"--easy to read…

This study employed a multi-cohort multi-occasion (MCMO) design to measure self-concept and academic achievement among 5- and 6-year-olds. Preliminary findings from the first two waves of data were used to examine: (1) the structure and development of a multidimensional self-concept; (2) the stability of self-concept responses over time; (3) the…

This paper describes the investigation of a computerized measure of reading rate as measured by the new Nelson-Denny Reading Test CD-ROM (1993). This study addressed three aspects of validity: (1) score comparability between reading rate measured by the computer version and the paper-and-pencil version; (2) concurrent validity with reading…

This paper presents the results of qualitative analyses that were designed to assess the validity of teachers' responses to items that measure topic coverage in mathematics and language arts. Using data from 12 "think-aloud" interviews and drawing on psychological theory about how respondents answer survey items, this research explored a number of…

This paper reports on a study that investigated the reliability and validity of a school-environment measuring instrument: the School Level Environment Questionnaire (SLEQ). Results were compared to teachers' and principals' perceptions of actual and ideal school environments. The questionnaire was sent to 60 schools throughout Australia where it…

A study investigated the Educational Testing Service's claim about the conversational nature of the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) from the perspective of native speakers of the target second language. Eight subjects listened to 16 randomly-selected OPI communicative speech events, and their perceptions were measured using a semantic…