A longitudinal study was initiated in the Tuscon Unified School District (TUSD) to follow the achievement of seventh and ninth grade Title I students: (1) to investigate the suitability and difficulty of the Total Reading Test of the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT) and the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (CTBS); (2) to compare the gains in…

A study was conducted to develop and examine an alternative to the traditional occupational experience method of the development of professional vocational teacher education competencies. A professional competence examination was developed to measure effectiveness of varying types and amounts of occupational experiences in developing vocational…

Sessions during the four day meeting of the Rural Sociology Section explored 14 major areas of interest. Most of the papers presented are included in this document which serves as the proceedings of the 1979 annual meeting. The first session of the meeting was devoted to methodology; four papers were presented and three of them are included in the…

A summary, prepared from notes and tape recordings, is presented of the 1979 conference of the National Consortium on Testing. Panel descussions on the following topics are included: (1) introduction; (2) update--recent and upcoming events concerning testing; (3) test preparation and coaching; (4) minimum competency testing; (5) program evaluation…

This conference focused on two themes: research in testing and the cooperative research program, and testing in the language arts. The morning session was concerned with the impact of the federal Cooperative Research Program on educational research. Papers were entitled: The Support of Measurement Projects by the Cooperative Research Program.…

Three conference sessions focused on attempts to implement minimum competency testing programs at various educational levels. In each of the sessions particular attention was paid to planning for the development of a minimum competency testing program; the processes of development, initiation, and interpretation of the results; and difficulties…

Conference proceedings are presented which explored the relationship of cultural pluralism to citizen education. Discussants included members of federal offices, national organizations, state departments of education, and private foundations from the U.S. Office of Education, the Office of Bilingual Education, the Council of Chief State School…

Mexican and American children in grades 1 through 3 in urban schools were administered the McDaniel-Piers Young Children's Self Concept Scale to compare their self concept scores. Comparisons were made within three socioeconomic levels by grade level and sex for each item on the scale. In comparing the results, four generalizations were inferred:…

Speeches made by five keynote speakers, summaries of five forum sessions, and one paper are included in this collection of presentations at a conference on the application of computer technology in New Zealand. The keynote addresses include "Analysis of Key Factors for Motivation of Data Processing Professionals," by J. Daniel Couger;…

The Portable Assisted Study Sequence (PASS) Program, a pilot correspondence course program specifically designed to assist the Statewide School Dropout Prevention Program by enabling migrant students throughout California to accumulate high school graduation credits more easily, was effective and worthwhile in 1978. Sixty-three curriculum units in…

A twenty-four item inventory was constructed and standardized in order to develop an instrument which measures the degree to which a preschool teacher adheres to Piaget's epistemological belief system. Using two criterion groups of teachers and graduate students--one Piagetian and one behaviorist--the inventory exhibited the ability to…

This study determined whether item forms ( rules for constructing items related to a domain or set of tasks) would enable naive item writers to generate multiple-choice items at three taxonomic levels--knowledge, comprehension, and application. Students wrote 120 multiple-choice items from 20 item forms, corresponding to educational objectives…

Simulated tailored tests were used to investigate the relationships between characteristics of the item pool and the computer program, and the reliability and bias of the resulting ability estimates. The computer program was varied to provide for various step sizes (differences in difficulty between successive steps) and different acceptance…

College instructors evaluted the quality of their own teaching and were evaluated by their students in 331 different courses. Student evaluations of teaching correlated with instructor self evaluations in courses taught by teaching assistants, in undergraduate courses taught by faculty, and in graduate level courses, demonstrating their validity…

Four systems for scoring student essays were used to classify eleventh grade and undergraduate students according to writing ability. The reliabilities of the raters and the validities of the systems in classifying students were emphasized. Two analytic scoring systems--which assume that quality writing is characterized by the inclusion of certain…