Discusses activities for developing students' listening comprehension in English-as-a-foreign-language classrooms in China. The activities have proved successful, and students participating in these courses have done well on the National Test for English Majors Band 4. (Author/VWL)

Examines the Texas Academic Skills Program (TASP), which tests all freshmen entering Texas public colleges. Suggests shifting emphasis from the testing instrument to reasons for poor student performance, since emphasis on testing has resulted in large increases in remedial instruction. Concludes that although TASP is a valid diagnostic tool, the…

High-stakes testing is forcing debate over achieving both educational excellence and equity. A pragmatic, middle position claims high-stakes testing can work with clear but limited goals, flexibility, and the will to address at-risk students' problems. Texas, Chicago, and New York City programs and implementation steps are highlighted. (MLH)

Discusses a six month project where pre-K-4 students in a music class explored whether humans were the only beings on earth who could sing or were musical. Explains that the music and science teachers collaborated on this project enabling the students to create hypotheses and test their observations on animals' musical abilities. (CMK)

Addresses the challenges faced in developing a task-based language assessment instrument for adult immigrants in Canada that is accountable to the needs of diverse groups of stakeholders, including learners, teachers, and administrators. The test, the Canadian Language Benchmarks Assessment (CLBA), is designed to place adult newcomers in language…

This study assessed the impact of training on the knowledge and confidence of over 80 teachers in decision making regarding participation and accommodation for students with disabilities in large-scale assessments. After training teachers expressed high confidence in their ability to make such decisions and a stronger relationship was found among…

Based on a survey among 1274 secondary school teachers in Flanders (Belgium), this paper describes the relationship between the assessment practices and forms of assessment policy (testing culture or assessment culture) and between forms of general school policy (student-oriented or achievement-oriented) and forms of assessment policy that…

The following is adapted from chapter 2 of "Assessing Expressive Learning: A Practical Guide for Teacher-Directed Authentic Assessment in K-12 Visual Art Education" by Charles Dorn, Stanley Madeja, and Robert Sabol. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ 2003. (Appendices referred to in the following article can be found in the book…

Extended matching sets questions (EMSQs) are a form of multiple-choice question (MCQ) consisting of a stem (the question or scenario) with an extended number of possible answers. Although there is no consensus on their absolute format, for the purpose of this paper a multiple-choice question with ten or more alternative answers is considered to be…

A novel Web-based Accountability Model (WAM) for assessment and learning in a Teacher Education Program was implemented. The objective is to explain the rationale for the WAM model, how it was implemented as the web-based Education Accountability System (EAS), and the impacts on the organization and the individual. Standards were followed in the…

In this article, one school district shares its experiences with computer-based testing and the immediate access to data it can provide. The Barren County School District in Glasgow, Kentucky, has partnered with the Northwest Evaluation Association to use their computer-based Measure of Academic Progress (MAP). The MAP testing platform is…

In this article, the author analyzes and summarizes geographic education in Louisiana from a historical perspective with a specific emphasis on the degree to which geography was implemented into the state's standards. To accomplish that, he draws from the following three sources of information: active and retired social studies teachers from a…

This paper reflects on the ongoing debate surrounding the usefulness (or otherwise) of multiple-choice questions (MCQ) as an assessment instrument. The context is a graduate school of business in Australia where an experiment was conducted to investigate the use of assertion-reason questions (ARQ), a sophisticated form of MCQ that aims to…

It is widely known that parent-teacher partnerships are vital to children's progress in their development and learning in schools. These partnerships involve parent-teacher conferences, parents helping in the classroom, teachers making home visits and parent education seminars. However, partnerships rarely extend to having parents involved in the…

If manufacturing a safer cigarette is technically possible--an open question--then mandating that tobacco manufacturers improve the safety of cigarettes would likely have both positive and negative implications for the nation's health. On the one hand, removing toxins may reduce the incidence of smoking-related diseases and premature mortality in…