The Nevada Department of Education implemented a standard setting study of the Pre-Professional Skills Tests. The tests constitute a secure test battery developed by the Educational Testing Service to assess basic proficiency in reading, writing, and mathematics via three multiple-choice tests and a written essay test. The Nevada study, in the…

The New Jersey College Basic Skills Placement Test (NJCBSPT) is designed to measure basic reading, writing, and mathematics skills of students entering New Jersey colleges. The test consists of five sections: Essay, Reading Comprehension, Sentence Sense, Mathematical Computation, and Elementary Algebra. The test is intended to answer the question…

The Advanced Placement Program reports grades to students and colleges on a 1 to 5 point scale derived from combining the separate scores on the multiple-choice and free-response sections of Advanced Placement Examinations (ADPEs). In this study, predictions of grades in first-semester college biology courses were made based on students' separate…

This evaluation of writing in the West Hartford CT Public Schools was part of a large evaluation of English/Language Arts. To provide information for program improvement and growth, the evaluation focused on six issues: (1) the extent of implementation of West Hartford's Composition Program; (2) how teachers use the Composition Program in their…

This paper reports on Educational Testing Service research studies investigating the parameters critical to reliability and validity in both the direct and indirect writing ability assessment of higher education applicants. The studies involved: (1) formulating an operational definition of writing competence; (2) designing and pretesting writing…

Issues and trends in criminal justice education are discussed in three papers. The first paper, "Issues and Trends in Criminal Justice Education: The Philosophy of Curriculum Development," by J. D. Jamieson, considers the logic underlying the assumptions made by academic generalists and training-oriented practitioners who influence curriculum…

Designed to accommodate a semester course in Native American Literature for secondary students, this teacher's guide includes a general introduction, a statement of the philosophy and goals upon which it is predicated, a nine-week block on post-Columbian literature, a nine-week block on oral literature, separate appendices for each block, a…

The literature on essay testing, and particularly the selection of topics which will stimulate the writing of essays, was reviewed in order to recommend a set of specifications that will produce topics that are maximally fair to all teacher certificate candidates. It was found that by far the greater part of the research relating to writing…

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…

The goals and purposes to be served by graduate level professional preparation for educators are examined and redefined in these essays. The authors are experienced as administrators in schools, colleges, or departments of education. The current state of graduate programs in education in terms of the pressures, problems, dilemmas, and…

The manuscript contains 48 essays commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Far Western Philosophy of Education Society. Topics included are cultural awareness; the teaching of values; philosophy and teacher education; humanistic education; existentialism and education; the nature of man; and the educational philosophies of Abraham J. Heschel,…

An effective and scientifically-based teaching methodology for use in higher education is proposed. Clinical theory and clinical practice are applied directly into the sphere of higher educational theory and methodology. Findings from the field of clinical psychology have been translated into appropriate and specific methodologies in the field of…

This publication is a compilation of 12 essays that originally appeared in issues of the American Association of School Administrators' journal, "The School Administrator," beginning in September 1971. Each essay focuses on a different set of educational issues and is intended to provide a thoughtful basis for study and understanding of current…

English writing ability of Hispanic college candidates taking the College Board's English Composition Test (ECT) was studied. The performance of three groups on essay and multiple choice portions of the ECT were compared with each other and with performance on the same measures by ECT test takers as a whole. (Author/DWH)

This document presents the personal narrative of an adult literacy practitioner who has worked with Literacy Volunteers of America and a reading center in Connecticut and who signed up for the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL) Teacher Research Project on Learner Motivation, Retention, and Persistence in 1998.…