Innovations, Educational Testing Service (ETS's) corporate magazine, provides information on educational assessment for educators, school leaders, researchers and policymakers around the world. Each issue focuses on a particular theme in assessment. This issue explores the question, "What makes a great teacher?" Articles in this issue…

On March 29, 2007, the Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing in Washington, D.C., entitled, "How NCLB Affects Students with Disabilities." Specifically, this hearing was held to determine how the No Child Left Behind Act helps, hurts, or keeps about the same, what has been done for children with disabilities. The…

Cell phones afford a set of distinctive advantages for gathering information on daily patterns of behavior, establishing relationships, maintaining contact, and providing professional expertise to participants in a wide array of programs, including intervention, treatment, and service. This paper presents new findings about innovative applications…

In Head Start, family service workers facilitate the process for guiding and assisting families in securing services needed for specific family issues regarding health care, housing, employment, education, and/or crisis management. These services were particularly important to families following Hurricane Charley and the subsequent recovery…

This paper provides a summary of the authors' attempts to uncover links between their measures, classroom mathematics instruction, and student learning. This paper also provides evidence regarding one central critique of their measures: that multiple-choice assessments cannot validly represent the knowledge, skills, and judgment involved in actual…

Providing detailed, constructive and helpful feedback is an important contribution to effective student learning. Quality assurance is also required to ensure consistency across all students and reduce error rates. However, with increasing workloads and student numbers these goals are becoming more difficult to achieve. An automated feedback…

This textbook emphasizes practical guidelines and approaches that work with special students mainstreamed into regular classrooms. The background of the mainstream and inclusion movements and labeling practices is considered, along with specific exceptionalities and methods effective in teaching children who have learning disabilities, mental…

This manual for Idaho school districts covers the identification, assessment, and educational needs of students who show intellectual promise, specific academic performance, leadership, creativity, or talent in the visual or performing arts. It is organized into seven chapters and seven appendices which take up approximately half the publication.…

The Student as Learner Inventory, which was developed at Alverno College (Wisconsin), is described. Alverno College is a private, 4-year liberal arts college for women with an enrollment of 2,500 students. The inventory, which is completed by entering and second semester students in an undergraduate program, is integral to the curriculum. The…

A guide to identifying, placing, and instructing children with severe disabilities, including deaf-blindness, is presented. Identification and placement information focuses on locating and referring children in need of special education services, the role of committees and staff members, the individualized education program, entrance and placement…

This paper describes an interim evaluation of the Block Schedule Restructuring Program at Governor Thomas Johnson High School in Frederick, Maryland. The program began in the 1992-93 school year, when the school changed from seven 48-minute class periods per day to a block schedule format of four 90-minute class periods. Classes are conducted on a…

Project Even Start is an intergenerational literacy project that promotes adult literacy, trains parents to support the educational growth of their children, and prepares children for school. The program is designed to facilitate joint participation by parents and children. It includes home-based instruction and child care, and it is integrated…

Reflecting the diverse philosophies and experiences of clinicians and practitioners, this book presents 30 essays that address the identification of reading strengths and weaknesses, assessment, and instructional strategies for remediation. Chapters in the book are (1) "The Role of Vision in Reading Disability" (Lois B. Bing); (2) "Problems with…

To facilitate the discussion of national education standards, this workbook extracts examples of education standards from eight documents that describe what students should be taught, or what they should know or be able to do in various subjects. These examples illustrate and document some existing standards, and should help policy makers sharpen…

Mentoring has a mystique that only good can come from it, that at the worst, mentoring programs will not accomplish all that they could, but the youth served will at least be better for the experience. Both impact and process evaluations are needed to answer questions about the real benefits and any potential adverse effects of mentoring. The…