This curriculum guide was devised as part of the Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) school district's "Blueprint for Academic Achievement," which called for the identification of essential learning for each grade. This guide covers the key competencies in reading and language arts--reading, writing, listening, and speaking--for grades seven through…

This collection includes several papers each on the legal aspects of bilingual education, the politics of implementing bilingual programs, the role of the community in establishing and maintaining bilingual programs, and bilingual program models. In addition, individual papers treat: (1) the impact of research on programs and policy, (2) the role…

This report clarifies pilot efforts which address new problem areas in educational needs. The project was initiated to determine the specific competencies essential to the management of educational projects in research and development. The goals of the project were to establish a profile of identified competencies for use in planning the content…

California's Pupil Proficiency Law requires each local school district to adopt standards of proficiency in the basic skills of reading comprehension, writing, and computation. Students are to be assessed in grades 4-11. Students not making sufficient progress towards meeting the district's standards are to be provided with remedial programs, and…

This bulletin contains the specifications for the reading, writing, and mathematics subtests of the Florida Teacher Certification Examination. The reading test uses the multiple-choice Cloze procedure and consists of ten passages of approximately 100 words selected from textbooks, journals, documents for teachers produced by the State Department…

This bulletin provides information about the Florida Teacher Certification Examination. It describes the development of the examination and presents the specifications for each of the subtests. Competencies and subskills are tested in the areas of reading, writing, mathematics, and professional education. The tentative examination schedule is…

The phenomenon of minimum competency testing (MCT) is explored, beginning with its origins in public concern for educational accountability. Three major themes appearing in the states enacting prescriptive legislation are described: state standards/state test (Florida); state standards/local test (Oregon); and local standards/local test…

After a period of striving for equal educational opportunity and progress toward that goal, American society is now shifting toward more emphasis on educational quality. However, some fear that the rise of Minimum Competency Testing (MCT) may hinder rather than help minority students' opportunities for equal education. Despite gains in the number…

Addressing the issue of testing and evaluation in English at the university level, this paper focuses on the development and use of the English Placement Test developed by the California State University system. The discussion of this testing program is placed within a framework of four testing principles: testing is an essential part of learning…

The inequality of opportunity that sometimes results from educational reform may not be an artifact or an aberration but may be the intended result of most programs. Although the ostensible goal of most educational reform is equal opportunity, very few programs achieve this goal. It is possible that the real goal of educational reform is continued…

One hundred fifty-one urban ninth grade students participated in an investigation of the effect of differentiated content in two congruent tests of reading. A congruent test was constructed by substituting information relevant to junior high school students within the parameters of a nonrelevant, standardized state test of reading. By maintaining…

The Johnsburg High School (McHenry, Illinois) curriculum project was designed to accomplish the following eight objectives: (1) develop a competency curriculum guide for a graphic arts program that will provide lessons for the instructor to use to implement this program; (2) determine job competencies, including minimum competencies for job entry;…

Teachers (N=39), administrators (N=9), and a speech therapist working with deaf students rated 240 competencies for teaching English as a symbol system. The top 38 competencies involved practical teaching skills and techniques. Competencies related to the oral-aural method, theory, and background information about deafness were not given high…

Offers different perspectives of the conference topics that were discussed at the 1984 meeting of the International Federation for the Teaching of English (IFTE): language and English teacher education, language and competence, language and tests, language and schooling, language and technology, and language and technological overkill. (HOD)

This study explored some factors associated with learning disabled high school students who passed the North Carolina Minimum Competency Test on the second administration. Factors examined include reading score on the first competency test, intelligence quotient, locus of control, mother's education, teacher support, student/teacher ratio, and…