In 1986, a study was conducted by the Rancho Santiago Community College District (RSCCD) to evaluate the relationship between reading placement scores and classroom performance. The study sample consisted of students from fall 1985, spring 1986, and fall 1986 who had been tested using the College Board Assessment and Placement Test upon…

Six basic questions that are important to consider in foreign language testing are often taken for granted: (1) What is it that a student "knows" when he or she has acquired a foreign language, and is it measured in qualitative or quantitative terms or both? (2) What are the roles of skills and attitudes in learning a foreign language?…

This report describes the second phase in the development of the University of Washington Teacher Assessment System designed to produce a new system for the evaluation of student teachers. The development of the new system took place in several phases. Phase one, a literature search as a data source for the development of a teacher assessment…

This paper addresses the issue of whether four of the learning styles instruments currently available are of sufficient psychometric quality to warrant their continued use either for research or educational purposes. Four instruments, which purport to measure learning styles, were selected for review. Criteria for selection were based in part on…

Six university English departments collaborated in this examination of the differences between multiple-choice and essay tests in evaluating writing skills. The study also investigated ways the two tools can complement one another, ways to improve cost effectiveness of essay testing, and ways to integrate assessment and the educational process.…

Methodological and conceptual issues arising from a study of student perceptions of secondary school class climate are discussed. Through a pilot study, 113 Likert-type items were collected, consisting of teacher-focused dimensions, classroom-focused dimensions, and instructional practices. Factor and cluster analyses were used at the item level.…

Two methods of conducting a needs assessment for inservice teacher education programs were tested to determine: (1) the level of consistency of information between the two methods; and (2) the comparative validity of the two types of needs assessments. Eighty-eight teachers were divided into four groups. An informal assessment technique,…

UNIACT, a major component of the American College Testing (ACT) Assessment Program, is one of the first interest inventories to employ a new technique for ensuring sex fairness in the reporting of scores. UNIACT was constructed with the goal that distributions of career options suggested to males and females would be similar. It is intended to…

This paper reviews the literatuare on projective techniques of personality assessment and their use by school psychologists. Following a brief survey of the development of projective techniques, several of the most widely used techniques are briefly discussed, i.e., the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), the Childrens Apperception Test (CAT), the…

With the proliferation of suicide prevention centers in the United States, the task of rapidly and effectively assessing an individual caller's suicide potential has become an important research problem. However, the social science researcher is often confronted with an ethical problem when the results of his predictive equations can be used to…

This manual makes accessible several widely used instruments for measuring perceptions of psychosocial characteristics of classroom environment among school students and teachers. Background information, scoring procedures, validation data, and preferred and short forms of the Learning Environment Inventory, My Class Inventory, Classroom…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the utility of out-of-level testing (OLT) when it is applied to the assessment of special education students with mild learning handicaps. This evaluation of OLT involved testing hypotheses related to: (1) the adequacy of vertical scaling, (2) the reliability and (3) the validity of OLT scores. Fifty-eight…

The effect on children's test scores of different item formats used in standardized mathematics achievement tests was investigated. In a Utah school, 40 second grade students completed a mathematics computation test using eight different formats derived from five standardized achievement tests. Identical content, taken from the most frequently…

A project was conducted to establish the validity of a procedure and set of instruments to facilitate a more systematic approach for the continued staff development of inservice secondary and postsecondary vocational instructors in three states (Kentucky, Virginia, and Wisconsin) with different delivery systems. The population consisted of a…

The performance of 566 elementary students enrolled in grades 1-6 from Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Washington, on direct measures of reading, spelling, and written expression was analyzed to determine the rate of students who would be eligible for special education services by each of four discrepancy criteria. Measures were individually…