Three aspects of student assessment are addressed in this collection of essays: accountability issues and the political tensions that they reflect; assessment practices, the use and misuse of testing, and emerging directions; and the impact of assessment. The collection includes: (1) "Expansion, Quality, and Testing in American…

This manual is intended to provide Illinois school districts with guidance in developing learning assessment plans and using testing materials as part of the school improvement program mandated by the 1985 educational reform legislation for Illinois. Designed primarily to be a series of "how to" booklets, the manual is divided into six…

A total of 326 public school teachers of kindergarten through grade 12 responded to a survey about teacher-made tests, testing practices, and the availability of testing resources and guidelines. Testing practices and preferences were found to vary significantly by grade level, subject area, and length of teaching experience. School testing…

The Objective Test Scoring and Performance Rating (OTS-PR) system is a fully integrated set of 70 modular FORTRAN programs run on a VAX-8530 computer. Even with no knowledge of computers, the user can implement OTS-PR to score multiple-choice tests, include scores from external sources such as hand-scored essays or scores from nationally…

A teacher's manual for operating the DX System, a software package for use in diagnostic testing programs, is presented. The DX System is constructed to present test items based on the individual student's pattern of responses. Described are: (1) system components designed to run on an Apple II computer; (2) program options allowing the user to…

Based on an extensive literature search, this paper reviews recent research and theoretical studies and discusses their applicability to Lansing Community College's (LCC's) Mathematics Laboratory. After noting the steps taken in data collection, part I describes LCC and its Math Lab, which offers developmental courses in a self-paced, mastery…

This paper introduces a probabilistic model that is capable of diagnosing and classifying cognitive errors in a general problem-solving domain. Item response theory is used to deal with the variability of response errors. Responses from a 38 item fraction addition test given to 595 junior high school students are used to illustrate the model.…

The differences in types of information-processing skills developed by different instructional backgrounds affect, negatively or positively, the learning of further advanced instructional materials. If prior and subsequent instructional methods are different, a proactive inhibition effect produces low achievement scores on a post test. This poses…

This report is the Proceedings of the third conference of its type. Included are 23 of the 25 papers presented at the conference, discussion of these papers by invited discussants, and symposium papers by a group of leaders in adaptive testing and latent trait test theory research and applications. The papers are organized into the following…

This report presents data concerning the validity of a set of experimental computerized and paper-and-pencil tests for measures of on-job performance on global and job elements. It reports on the usefulness of 30 experimental and operational variables for predicting marks on 42 job elements and on a global criterion for Electrician's Mate,…

Reports on a study designed to determine whether or not biology students were being disadvantaged by taking computer tests instead of written paper forms of the same tests. Results indicated that mean scores on computer-administered and written forms of the same test were approximately equivalent. (TW)

Describes program operation, applications, and teacher and student opinions of DELPHI, a computer program used in a wide variety of subjects which allows students and instructors to enter questions anonymously for others to answer. These question-answer pairs are then presented to other students or the instructor for comment or evaluation. (MBR)

Following a critique of so-called educational testing, this article examines three "educationally noteworthy school testing programs"--those of Portland, Oregon; Orange County, Florida; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and one noteworthy school with no standardized testing: the Prospect School in Bennington, Vermont. Derives some broad…

Describes design of an item bank for use with lower ability mathematics students in Scottish secondary schools. Aspects of bank usage discussed include raw score translation to measures on validated scales, test design for various purposes, and ways of recording and analyzing results. Test examples with corresponding outputs are given. (Author/MBR)

According to the requirement of modern teaching theory and technology, based on software engineering, database theory, the technique of net information security and system integration, a net testing system on local network was designed and realized. The system benefits for dividing of testing & teaching and settles the problems of random…