Over 6,000 sixth- and twelfth-grade students from 33 school districts in Kansas were tested in 13 areas of academic and non-academic skills: arts and humanities; communication; mathematics; career preparation; consumer preparation; environmental education; health; nutrition; preparation for a changing society; safety; self concept; science; and…

In order to compose equivalent certification tests in the basic skills in reading, mathematics calculations and applications, and writing for high school graduation requirements, the San Jose Unified School District, California, used the Rasch computer program to arrive at the scaled difficulty level of test items. The procedure for achieving a…

Information on 1980 Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores and characteristics of Maryland college-bound seniors, along with trends for 1974-80, are considered. Numbers of Maryland high school graduates taking the test, the race and sex of test-takers, SAT scores for Maryland and the United States for 1972-80, and the Maryland mean score on the SAT…

The validity of cut-off scores, used to place students into English and mathematics courses, and a dichotomized success variable, representing student abilities related to success in three sequential mathematics courses, were investigated. This study, examining the cutting scores of students entering Mercer County Community College in Fall, 1978,…

Factors influencing the performance of handicapped students on the North Carolina Minimum Competency Test (Fall, 1978 administration) were analyzed. Educably mentally handicapped (EMH) and learning disabled (LD) students represented 83% of the 3,043 handicapped students who took the Fall, 1978 test. A questionnaire was designed to collect the…

This manual is designed to accompany reports prepared by the Pennsylvania Department of Education for the 505 school districts in that state, summarizing results of the Educational Quality Assessment. The normative sample is described as being stratified on two dimensions: district enrollment and wealth. Administrative procedures are summarized.…

The revised and renamed Strong Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII) is examined to determine if the occupational and sex biases present in the older Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB) were eliminated. It is concluded that an occupational bias (favoring professional rather than blue-collar occupations) still exists in the SCII, although there is…

Options are suggested for using and expanding upon the RMC models for evaluating the effectiveness of Title I mastery learning programs with planned high turnover of students. Examples are given of uses of the diagnostic and reporting systems for program planning and decision making. It is suggested that consideration be given to: (1) determining…

The instructional reading levels of students enrolled at Charles Stewart Mott Community College, a large urban institution with an open door policy, were investigated for 1971-72 through 1977-78. The study was based on the hypothesis that mean average reading levels in reading improvement classes declined over those years. All students entering…

Six school districts in California provided data on the Public School Version of the Adaptive Behavior Scale for 373 children, ages three through six, who were enrolled in regular and trainable mentally retarded (TMR) preschool programs. The results of the study are reported as means and standard deviations of the domain scores for Part One and…

The purpose of these studies was to develop and demonstrate a model for identifying criterion levels of performance that can be rationally defended as being the best level of performance for a particular instructional task. The specific objective was to identify the score on a cloze test that represents the most desirable level of performance on…

The study assessed the feasibility of training parents to ameliorate their children's learning disabilities in the area of reading. Parents were instructed in teaching their own children. Differences in gain scores and learning rate on the reading instruments tested the hypotheses of efficacy of parental help for 26 second graders. Treatment…

The corpus of descriptive terminology associated with achievement testing has expanded considerably in recent years, in large part due to the heightened interest in absolute and/or direct metrics for interpreting test performance plus the development of more rigorous strategies for specifying test content. Widely prevalent disagreement about…

I taught 4 types of EFL courses to undergraduate students online: Grammar, writing, culture and study skills using Blackboard and Nicenet. Online instruction was used as a supplement to traditional in-class instruction. Significant differences were found between pre- and post-test scores in writing, grammar and culture but not in study skills. The…

This report describes the conduct and outcomes of an experimental pilot study conducted in Spring 2004 to develop and test a model that aimed to enhance career and technical education (CTE) instruction with the mathematics already embedded in the curricula of six occupational areas. Although present in the CTE curriculum, math is largely implicit…