This manual for examiners administering the Primary Test of Economic Understanding (PTEU) describes the purpose, development, and validity of the test which is designed to provide a measure of students' growth and a means to assess the effectiveness of existing materials, teaching strategies, and pre-service and in-service economics education…

A modified Montessori nursery school program operating in a private urban school serving a racially heterogeneous population was evaluated. The project called for investigating the educational effects of the program on both Head Start and middle class children. The impression was that children participated in the project differentially. That is,…

This handbook is a detailed guide to more than 300 measures of child behavior and development not available from test publishers. The authors surveyed the literature over a ten-year period to find more than a thousand measures; those included here are not described in other sourcebooks and guides. Thus this book is the only guide to many of the…

A battery of tests dealing with attitudinal, reasoning and job-orientation skills were predictively validated against trainee performance criterion information obtained at completion of the Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC) manpower training program and at approximately six to eight months following training. Validity coefficients based…

The goal of the project was to validate, refine, and develop plans for implementation of a performance-based challenge test in the cognitive and psychomotor aspects of basic clothing construction skills that could be utilized for grades 7-14. An advisory board and a jury panel representing the three instructional levels provided assistance in…

Reports on a longitudinal study conducted by the Ohio Sea Grant Education Program. Indicates that over the four-year period, an increase of over 10 percent was noted in knowledge scores whereas attitudes did not commensurately change. States that information considered critical to responsible decision making may still be lacking. (RT)

This author reviews published data and presents new data relevant to the Spearman hypothesis concerning racial differences on cognitive tests. He concludes that across-the-board difference between SES groups occurs primarily on the general factor, and that there are major determinants of race differences independent of the general factor.…

The author responds to criticisms made by Jensen pertaining to tests of the Spearman hypothesis. The near-zero correlation between Blacks and low socio-economic status Whites is neither an artifact of methodology nor a sampling fluke. Low and high SES White differences are highly correlated with general factor loadings. (LMO)

This study investigates the relationship between reading ability, working memory capacity, and readers' use and recall of the mechanism of prediction. Reading ability was measured by free recall and by comprehension questions, and working memory capacity was assessed by the Reading Span Test (Daneman and Carpenter, 1980). Twelve Brazilian speakers…

In samples of 1,005 adolescents and adults in Hong Kong and 281 adolescents and adults in London (England), Moral Development Test patterns conform to that predicted by L. Kohlberg's stage theory of moral development (1969), but the degree of association between the stages differed between cultures. (SLD)

Reports results of procedures directed at isolating and identifying students' difficulties in comprehending the concepts involved in lessons about gas exchange and respiration. Indicates that pupils (n=137) had deficient understanding of prerequisite concepts and tended to operate at the concrete operational level, whereas the highly abstract…

Presents results of 46 randomly selected children's performance measurement and partitive division problems when remainders are zero, nonzero but not used in the solution, and nonzero and used in the solution. Results indicate that children demonstrate an understanding of division prior to formal instruction. (MDH)

The use of restricted item response models to test hypotheses regarding item difficulty ordering and slope uniformity was demonstrated in a study in which 597 algebra students were asked to solve word problems reflecting various types of cognitive processing. Benefits and limitations of the procedures are discussed. (SLD)

In conjunction with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997 (IDEA; PL 105-17), the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (NCLB; PL 107-110) calls for enhancements to existing assessment and accountability systems within specific timelines. The NCLB Act also stresses the importance of using reliable and valid data for decision making.…

Criteria for relevant classroom assessments are discussed, and a biofunctional model of learning assessment is presented. In classroom assessment, the following criteria must be considered: (1) assessment approach (process-oriented and outcome-oriented); (2) assessment context (knowledge and higher-order thinking skills); (3) assessment method…