The reliability of grading by tutors at the Open University in Great Britain is examined. It is found that essays pose the greatest problem, which affects instruction in the arts, social sciences, and education most greatly. Less cause for alarm is found in other curricular areas. (MSE)

A sociometric nominations instrument called Guess Who was administered to 13,045 elementary school children and then subjected to an image analysis. Four factors were extracted--disruptive, bright, dull, and quiet/well-behaved--and related to teacher ratings, self-reports and other measures. (Author/JKS)

Artificially induced expectancy of essay quality and handwriting quality of essays were shown to affect reader ratings of essay tests. There was a significant effect for expectancy, none for handwriting, and an interesting but non-significant interaction effect. (JKS)

The purpose of this research was to further study the breadth and depth dimensions of the WAIS similarities and vocabulary subscales by factor analyzing several measures of intelligence: a comprehension index, SAT scores, and grade point average (GPA). (Author/SJL)

A discussion is presented which includes the following topics: purposes of testing, planning your test, instructional objectives, testing understanding, testing computation, testing applications and problem solving, evaluation and diagnosis, marking, and communicating with parents. (MK)

Presents a technical description of Radio Shack's TRS-80 microcomputer system. Storage and memory are discussed, as well as limitations of the system and a sample program for coding and scoring true-false questions is given. (RAO)

The use of achievement levels and anchor points in press reports of the 1990 National Assessment of Educational Progress mathematics assessment was studied. In a review of 41 articles, widespread oversimplification and frequent misinterpretations were found, sometimes stemming from standards-based reporting. Implications for future standards-based…

Compares the acquisition of vocabulary by Dutch advanced students of French reading a French story in one of three text reading conditions: marginal glosses; dictionary; or control. Results indicate that frequency of word occurrence fosters incidental vocabulary learning more when the first two conditions exist. (40 references) (Author/CK)

Discusses how to teach the elements of music as well as the National Music Education Standards. Explains that teachers can accomplish this goal by using conjoined rubrics. Describes how to create a conjoined rubric, how to score the rubric, and what resources are available. (CMK)

Focuses on how history teachers can develop a summative teaching portfolio including a checklist of documents to have in a portfolio, criteria for assessing a portfolio, a chart integrating history and teaching standards, and a rubric to assist in evaluating the portfolio. (CMK)

States that when students create rubrics, they have a better understanding of a music class assignment. Addresses how teachers can assist students in creating rubrics. Provides sample rubrics created by students and offers a list of resources related to creating rubrics. (CMK)

Examined effects of item characteristics on cloze text performance. Focus was on the relationship between cloze item characteristics and scoring methods. Item characteristics examined were: content/function words; parts of speech; word frequency; number of occurrences of a word in text; alternative answers; syntactic variation; amount of content;…

Discusses the validity of automated, or computer-based, scoring for improving the cost effectiveness of performance assessments and describes a study that examined the relationship of scores from a graduate level writing assessment to several independent, non-test indicators of examinee's writing skills, both for automated scores and for scores…

The relationship of an expert-system-scored constrained free-response item type to multiple-choice and free-response items was studied using data for 614 students on the College Board's Advanced Placement Computer Science (APCS) Examination. Implications for testing and the APCS test are discussed. (SLD)

A design for test equating based on Item Response Theory is proposed and illustrated through a simulation study of about 1,000 primary students taking two examinations. This test-equating method allows decision makers in a standard setting exercise access to high quality information. (SLD)