Reviews techniques of evaluation in mathematics and discusses three testing issues and their implications: objective and subjective methods, behavioral objectives in test construction, norm-referenced and criterion-referenced measures. Recommendations on testing practices are also summarized. (HM)

Describes the Twelfth Annual International Essay Olympics, a popularly-formated closed-circuit instructional television program to teach answering essay questions to first-year university students. (CMV)

The author discusses efforts of the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped through the Cooperative Manpower Planning in Special Education Project to implement provisions of P.L. 94-142 (the Education for All Handicapped Children Act) regarding in-service education. (CL)

The profound moral questions raised by the Holocaust present teachers and students with daunting challenges. A recent study evaluated eighth-grade students' writings on lessons for their generation, based on learnings from an interdisciplinary course stressing roles of perpetrator, victim, bystander, and rescuer. Although most students saw…

Demonstrates how the teacher can use texts to confront learners with cultural representations. Four texts are used to represent a literary extract, a student essay, an advertising document, and a newspaper article. The article illustrates approaches that borrow from stylistics, linguistics, and discourse analysis. (21 references) (Author/CK)

Focuses on testing writing in the English-as-a-Foreign-Language classroom. Describes a study comparing students' expectations of grades with their actual grades earned for essays assigned in freshman English classes at the Lebanese American University. (Author/VWL)

Discusses the events of the Haitian Revolution, including the slave rebellion which began on August 22, 1791. Focuses on the efforts of Napoleon to overtake Haiti and the effects of the the slave revolt on the Louisiana Purchase and the U.S. Civil War. Includes an annotated bibliography. (CMK)

Facetious, yet honest, look at expressing oneself when angry or upset. Contains samples of letters one wishes one could write, along with the types of letters one actually should write. The central point: Write that scathing message to vent your frustrations, but don't deliver it. (WFA)

Describes a Language Development course that integrates language learning with drama activities in a Teaching-English-as-a-Second-Language (TESL) program at the University of Brunei. The strategies are described using William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" and George Orwell's "Animal Farm." (GLR)

Discusses the use of the WORDS computer program in scoring writing assignments. Explains that computerized analysis has identified factors in experienced writers' essays that graders favor but has failed to distinguish clearly between basic and average writers' works. Concludes that holistic scoring can work effectively for student placement, but…

Investigates eighth-graders' summarizations of a scientific article used in their science class. Presents an analytic coding system developed to describe and detail structural and semantic strengths and weaknesses of students' expository summary essays. (SR)

The effect of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) specific sentence-level errors was examined using 18 randomly chosen essays representing the range of ESL writing found in most large testing situations. Results suggest that graders with insufficient training in evaluating ESL essays differ in their judgment of the weight assigned to ESL error,…

Examines the role of the outdoors in child development. The expanse of outdoors teaches humility, yet does not judge, thereby teaching self-esteem. Nature's diversity teaches that difference is the norm, thereby teaching tolerance. Small nearby places that children favor--trees, brooks, ponds--nurture a sense of home. Early outdoor experiences are…

Seventh-grade science students (n=22) wrote prompted essays, compare-contrast essays, and traditional end-of-chapter criterion-referenced tests. Results indicated that essay tests may be highly sensitive to instructional content and prompt design, and the validity of essays as measures of content learning relates more to goals of instruction than…

The effects of presenting a choice of writing tasks on the quality of essays produced by eleventh graders were studied with 34,200 students in Georgia. The choice condition had no substantive effect on the quality of essays, but race, gender, and the writing task variable did. (SLD)