An English/reading steering committee was formed in the 1992-93 academic year at Miami-Dade Community College, in Florida, to recommend college-wide procedures and guidelines for including a writing sample on placement tests for entering students. The committee pilot tested a writing sample in two college-preparatory and one college-level English…

The subject of this dissertation is the examination of differential item functioning (DIF) through the use of loglinear Rasch models with latent classes. DIF refers to the probability that a correct response among equally able test takers is different for various racial, ethnic, and gender groups. Because usual methods of detecting DIF give little…

College faculty are unlike other teachers in that they are not trained to teach and have little supervision. Effectiveness of language instruction is more difficult than most to evaluate. Contemporary models of supervision tend to emphasize training, not evaluation, even for teaching assistants. Some see teaching as an art, not susceptible to…

The 1992-93 school year saw the second statewide implementation of the Vermont portfolio-assessment program, and RAND continued its ongoing evaluation of the program's implementation, effects, and data quality. While the first year's study found evidence of the impact of the assessment program and low reliability of portfolio scoring, this year's…

An interview measure of social-cognitive skills that have been found to discriminate aggressive and nonaggressive children was developed. The interview was administered to 25 second and third grade children identified by teachers as nonaggressive and 50 second and third grade children identified by teachers as aggressive and referred to an…

This study investigated the procedures used by psychologists in a large midwestern urban area for the initial diagnosis and placement of elementary children with severe emotional disturbance (SED) in educational programs in light of the widespread criticism of the use of projective tests due to the questionable reliability of the tests and…

A study used four statistical item bias analysis strategies to determine the French cross-cultural validity of the Maine Educational Assessment, a standardized test administered in six content areas to students in grades 4, 8, and 11. Analysis was performed on eighth grade pupil performance in test year 1988-89, in the areas of the 100 common…

The use of multiple-choice test items measuring content-specific pedagogical knowledge (C-P) as a viable method of increasing the validity of teacher tests is described. The purposes of the paper are to: (1) present examples of multiple-choice test items used for the assessment of C-P and contrast these items with items used for assessing content…

Kuwait University initially developed a new English placement test for students to help upgrade English language instruction throughout the country's educational system, through diagnosis of relative English proficiency levels of all secondary school graduates, determination of suitable admissions criteria for all higher education institutions,…

Litigation in the area of teacher evaluation has developed around issues concerning the processes and criteria used by school districts in conducting evaluations. Following an introduction explaining basic concepts, chapter 2 discusses the appropriate content of teacher evaluation, examining formal adoption of evaluation policies, compliance with…

An attempt is made is this paper to examine the validity of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) scale through a comparison of the scaling of speaking tasks and speech performances by the scale and by a Rasch analysis of judgments made by "naive" persons. The results of the multi-faceted Rasch analysis seem…

The predictive validity of the National Teacher Examinations (NTE) tests of communications skills (CS) and general knowledge (GK) as entrance requirements for teacher education programs and for later performance on the state certification examination were studied. Data were collected for 1,143 graduates of teacher education programs in North…

The present study investigated the reliability and validity of scores from the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory. The CAP is a screening device for physical abuse potential in adults; it is a self-administered test written on a third-grade reading level. Subjects were 113 mothers, including 53 (46.9%) mothers of young children with handicaps,…

A program of research was conducted to define the most crucial aspects of print awareness and to develop a tool to measure the resulting construct, validate the instrument, and explore the role print awareness plays in the acquisition of young children's literacy skills. Four basic concepts concerning print that are necessary to give print…

To determine whether the Posner task, which measures the speed at which information is retrieved from the long term memory, improves prediction of reading comprehension, 121 students from reading and study skills and teacher education courses were administered the Posner task and listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and SAT verbal…