Questions about alternative forms of assessment were discussed by two elementary school and two high school teachers who are members of the National Education Association/International Business Machines (IBM) School Renewal Network. Their correspondence on that computer network was also analyzed. The following questions were considered: how have…

A new professional licensure system for teachers developed by the Minnesota Board of Teaching in conjunction with the Educational Testing Service is described. Initial work with the Rand Corporation in 1987 provided a plan for a new licensure system. The state's expectations for a performance assessment system to measure the skills of first-year…

The possibility of using portfolios as a placement tool for freshman English at the University of Nevada (Reno) was studied. Three university instructors who, among them, taught all 3 levels of freshman English, from remedial (English 001) to accelerated (English 102), read portfolios assembled for 58 students in 3 college-bound high school senior…

Since its introduction in 1988 the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), the main public examination for pupils at age 16 in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, has become an obvious area in which to investigate gender-related differences in performance. As a complex attainment test, the GCSE is largely made up of a coursework…

Instruction based on learning styles has received little attention in the recent reform efforts in mathematics education. The purpose of this book is to address the improvement of mathematics instruction through sensitivity to learning styles. The introduction discusses the scope and rationale of the book. Chapter 2 documents the need for…

One potential approach to the authentic assessment of what students know and can do in science is concept mapping. A concept map is a graph consisting of nodes representing concepts and labeled lines denoting the relation between a pair of nodes (concepts). The external concept map constructed by the student is interpreted as representing…

The United States is moving toward a more national, performance-based view of curriculum policy. The federal government will play a modest role in nationalizing curriculum policy issues, largely by pressuring states and localities through national standards. The chief agents of nationalization will continue to be state and locally based…

Assessment of student performance is emerging as a crucial ingredient in the recipe for ongoing improvement of school science. This digest focuses on assessment in the service of instruction, for helping students, teachers, and parents monitor learning. According to M. Jorgensen, performance-based assessment requires that the student demonstrate,…

The impact of portfolio assessment, specifically writing portfolios, on the norms of classroom assessment practices were studied in two English Language Arts classes in a middle class suburban high school in the Los Angeles (California) area. Data were gathered through observations and interviews, and the examination of 25 student portfolios, with…

A research project was conducted in Washington State in 1992 to develop an assessment system that could be used by adult basic education (ABE) and English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) programs to satisfy accountability requirements and to provide assessment information useful for classroom instruction. In this preliminary work, 35 ABE/ESL programs…

This empirical study was conducted to explore both the influence of assessment on teachers' classroom practice during an assessment driven educational reform, and the principle underlying assessment driven instruction, i.e., "what you test is what you get." Factors targeted at the level of assessment were performance-based or objective…

One aspect of the development of a performance assessment is addressed--the field testing of the tasks. In a performance-based assessment, the tasks must allow each examinee a fair and equal opportunity to give the best possible demonstration of his or her ability, and must elicit a performance sample that enables scorers to evaluate each examinee…

An overview of an international conference held on the campus of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) to take stock of the development and use of educational quality indicator systems at the local, state, national, and international levels is provided. Major implications and findings of the education summit held at the University of…

The course of study of time-of-day effects on human performance has not been an easy one to chart, with many findings that seem to be in opposition. This review examines the difference between group and individual differences with regard to time-of-day effects; time-of-day effects in individuals; morningness-eveningness as an individual…

The high school diploma is no longer the credential for a lifetime and it has not been for decades. Since the 1970s, there has been a growing consensus that training or education beyond high school is necessary to qualify for "family wage" jobs, jobs that pay enough for a family to live reasonably comfortably. Despite this widespread…