Initial efforts to validate a developmentally appropriate assessment system for use with children aged 3 to 7 years are described. The Project Construct Assessment System is part of a comprehensive framework for curriculum and assessment that is predicated on the theory that children construct their own knowledge. It features a variety of…

The California Assessment Collaborative (CAC) was designed as a three-year effort to identify, validate, and disseminate alternatives to standardized testing throughout the state. This report highlights the results from the first year and comments on the work of 22 diverse pilot projects that serve as examples of site-based development of…

This book supports constructive discussion about assessment and provides concrete directions for change. The 10 chapters outline many of the difficulties associated with current standardized testing. While most educators refer to the new non-standardized test efforts as alternative assessments, this type of assessment is increasingly being called…

Several leaders in education have concluded that the United States should have some form of national achievement testing. Such tests are proposed as part of the "America 2000" education strategy. Believing that the experience of other countries will be useful to educators, policymakers, and concerned citizens, the National Endowment for…

New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) established a Task Force on Student Assessment in the spring of 1990, which was designed to: review available information on testing principles and practices; make recommendations for reform of testing; and communicate its findings to NYSUT members. Ten recommendations were made, centering on the necessity…

Science process skills are described as a set of broadly transferable abilities, appropriate to all of the science disciplines and reflective of the true behavior of scientists. While science process skills have gained wide acceptance as an integral part of the science curricula, the development of valid and reliable instruments to assess those…

Information was gathered to determine the extent to which more authentic education assessments, including whole language assessments, are being implemented, and to identify which organizations conduct authentic education assessments. Materials used by the surveyed organizations were collected and catalogued into a compendium of authentic…

Introduction: Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) projects are difficult to evaluate when implemented at most organizations. There are many variables and some of these are qualitative and hard to assess. However, there are other variables that could be measured and, thus, for a specific CSCW system, management could have a performance…

As a precursor to making recommendations for more effective assessment methods for teacher certification, an examination is made of the professions of law and medicine. Specifically, the examination covers the relationship between training programs and the methods employed for evaluating prospective lawyers and doctors to ensure that they have the…

California has provided other states with an example of how not to assess student writing and has initiated a new direction in the statewide assessment of student writing achievement, a direction designed to influence writing instruction positively. Before 1987, the California Assessment Program (CAP) limited English skills assessment to multiple…

Using the Internet to administer homework allows us to determine if students change their homework habits during a semester and if this change results in an improvement in grades.

The purpose of this article is to deal with the following issues as they relate to educational grading policy: (1) to examine the use and misuse of grades in education; (2) to explore the use of performance based grading versus traditional grading and compare institutions using traditional grading versus those using performance based or…

The author reviews various current approaches to evaluating pupil achievement, evaluating instruction, and using grades, grade point averages, and class rank. Such issues as the philosophical and psychological bases for selection and use of evaluation instruments, the use of performance objectives, ways to reduce subjectivity in grading, the use…

Developed and edited by the National Association of College and University Business Officers' (NACUBO's) Accounting Principles Council, this guidebook, written by highly experienced, seasoned college and university leaders, is designed to help readers make sense of today's world and provide the right tools to make the right decisions. The book,…

Recent language testing research investigates factors other than language proficiency that may be responsible for systematic variance in language test performance. One such factor is the test takers' cognitive styles. The present study was carried out with the aim of finding the probable effects of Iranian EFL learners' cognitive styles on their…