The selection of second and fifth grade students for the Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study (BTES) is described. The BTES investigates teacher behaviors which relate to student achievement in reading and mathematics. From a group of teachers, schools, and districts volunteering to participate, 46 schools in 14 school districts were selected. The…

This monograph describes a practical, low cost needs assessment process used by Broward Community College (Florida) in cooperation with the public school system. The assessment was initiated by college administrators who needed information to plan appropriate programs and services for the residents living in a newly created service area. The…

This guide begins with a series of questions and answers which introduce Pennsylvania's Educational Quality Assessment (EQA) Inventory as a 188-to 190-item multiple choice test for fifth, eighth, and eleventh grades. Items are selected from a 400-item bank using matrix sampling procedures. Test results are analyzed at the school level; no…

A central problem for the user of domain-referenced tests in instruction is deciding who has passed and who has failed. Two procedures were presented and discussed. The first, employing classical test theory, was found to be more useful for larger domains and where the passing standard is 70 percent or less. The sampling procedure suggested by…

An effort by the Office of Education to assist some 900 school districts, through financial aid, with the problems attendant with the final stages of their desegregation plan or the carrying out of a court-ordered plan is discussed. This effort, the Emergency School Assistance Program (ESAP), was evaluated to determine: (1) overall effectiveness,…

The 1998 High School Transcript Study provides the U.S. Department of Education and other educational policymakers with information regarding current course offerings and students' course-taking patterns in U.S. secondary schools. Similar studies were conducted in 1982, 1987, 1990, and 1994. This guide documents the procedures used to collect and…

The utility of the biomedical model of adjusted statistics is demonstrated. The model is recommended for use by educational researchers to randomize subjects for a more accurate estimate of school programs' success or failure when compared across classrooms or other units. (Author/MH)

This report is based on the second survey in the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 series (NELS:88). Data are from a questionnaire administered to 20,706 tenth graders and dropouts in 1990. The study design resulted in a sample representative of tenth graders across the country. The wealth of NELS:88 data makes it difficult to organize…

Some of the issues faced by institutions as they attempt to design a system of constructs that reflects the diversity of their schools are addressed. The choice of statistic, percentage passing versus mean, used in reporting test results can impact the allocation of services to subpopulations in the school. Percent passing statistics tend to focus…

Results of the seventh year of testing by the Pupil Assessment Program of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction are presented. In 1982, objective-referenced tests in science, mathematics, and geometry were given to a sample of Wisconsin's public school students in grades 4, 8, 11, and 12. Students were also given the Comprehensive Tests…

The Pell Grant Quality Control Study of 1982-83 was designed to identify program error rate, to measure the impact of increased validation activity, and to propose corrective actions to reduce the misallocation of program funds. A sample of approximately 4,000 students drawn from a sample of 317 participating institutions showed that Pell Grant…

The development and validation of a test of listening comprehension for English as a second language at the Dutch National Institute for Educational Measurement (Cito) is described. The test uses two distinct item formats: true-false items and modified cloze items with two options. Both item formats were found to measure foreign language listening…

This handbook provides survey questionnaires and procedures to guide users in the conduct of follow-up studies to assess the transition success of special education and non-special education students. It focuses on collecting three types of data (employment activities, quality of life, and goal achievement) for special education students and…

The "Participation in Adult Education" machine-readable data file (MRDF) is prepared triennially for the Center for Education Statistics (CES) by the Bureau of the Census, as a supplement to its regular "Current Population Survey" (sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics). Previous specialized surveys in this series have…

Ways that data from four major longitudinal surveys can be used in postsecondary education policy analysis are discussed: the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience (NLS-LM), Project TALENT, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), and the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS-HS). The potential use…