In 1987, the administration of North Carolina Competency Tests to public school sophomores resulted in 94.4% passing the reading test and 90.6% passing the mathematics test. Rates were similar to rates for the 1986 sophomores, but were higher than rates for juniors in the 1978-1983 period. The 1987 passing rate in mathematics was lower than for…

This report provides a record of student achievement for the State of New York in the 1984-85 school year. It brings together a variety of achievement indicators with a clear focus on knowledge and higher-order skills. Three types of achievement data are presented. One consists of scores obtained on New York State (NYS) tests. These scores may be…

Conducted as part of a larger study, this study attempted to describe and compare academic achievement of students who intended to enter selected faculties (education, engineering, arts and sciences) of the University of Regina (Canada) in the fall of 1982 and 1983 and who graduated from Saskatchewan high schools. This group totaled 3,632 of whom…

Item response model applications to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data specifically aimed at the uses of item response models in mathematics item banking are discussed. Approaches for addressing goodness of fit were organized into three categories: Checks on model assumptions, expected features, and additional model…

The predictive validity of the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) aptitude test has been investigated for foreign students at the University of Kansas. A total of 148 students whose first language was other than English were selected for this study. Verbal and quantitative scores on the GRE, field of study, sex, and year of initial enrollment were…

In this report, basic skills areas for three grade levels are covered, along with average grade equivalent scores on the California Achievement Tests for the 1981-1982 school year. Included are reading comprehension, language, and mathematics scores for grades 3, 5, and 8. The major findings from analyses of the statewide results indicate that…

In this report, basic skills areas for three grade levels are covered, along with average grade equivalent scores on the California Achievement Tests for the 1982-83 school year. Included are reading comprehension, language, and mathematics scores for grades 3, 5, and 8. The major findings from analyses of the statewide result indicate that the…

Test scores were compared for two types of objective achievement tests--multiple choice tests and the recently developed Multi-Digit Test (MDT) procedure. MDT is an approximation of the fill-in-the-blank technique. Students select their answers from long lists of alphabetized terms, with each answer corresponding to a number from 001 to 999. The…

As part of the Department of Defense Dependents Schools (DoDDS) annual assessment of achievement, the Metropolitan Readiness Tests (MRT) were administered to approximately 14,768 first-grade pupils in the fall of 1983. The mean scaled scores of the DoDDS first graders clustered around the national mean of 150. The DoDDS mean scores in the various…

After two years of investigation, a panel appointed to advise the College Entrance Examination Board and Educational Testing Service on the recent change in Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores concluded that the 14-year score decline is a complex phenomenon, yielding neither simple explanations nor easy solutions. As a result of looking at the…

Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores have declined during the last 14 years. Similar score declines have been observed in many different testing programs, many groups, and tested areas. The declines, while not large in any given year, have been consistent over time, area, and group. The period around 1965 is critical for the interpretation of…

Data are presented concerning the numbers of students taking the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) and the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), and their mean scores for the period 1959 through l976. The implications of these results in relation to changes in the candidate group…

A reading ability test is described in terms of its purpose, its outline, its reliability, and judgments about the relevance of its content. Copies of the two forms of the test and the answer key are appended. A review of some of the literature on literacy indicates the difficulty of reaching consensus in its definition or in the setting of…

Trends in academic performance from 1961 to 1979 for entering freshmen at Georgia State University were examined. Verbal and mathematics scores of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), high school average (HSA), and freshman grade point average (GPA) were analyzed. It was found that SAT verbal and mathematics scores remained generally stable; over…

This paper discusses a study undertaken to analyze pre-and posttest scores of junior high and high school students involved in an aging education unit. Objectives were to determine whether a unit on aging helped students relate to aging as part of the life cycle and to assess the success of different modes of instruction (i.e. independent study,…