Practical and engaging, this book contains 21 case studies that help students apply curriculum theory to classroom reality. Each case is authored by an in-service teacher, reflecting on ways to improve instruction by making changes to various aspects of the curriculum. These real-life examples investigate up-to-date curricular issues ranging from…

Noting that assessment plays a prominent role in all levels of the American educational system, this report characterizes the realities of reading assessment and its historical evolution. The report then characterizes possible approaches to shaping the future of reading assessment--resistance, complacency, and reform. The report considers the…

The urgency to enhance the quality of science education for all of the nation's children and youth increases as we approach the next century. To address some of the issues and to obtain insight from a variety of sources regarding the problems facing educators in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology education, a Summer Symposium was…

This study presents psychometric characteristics of the mathematics problem solving performance assessment used in the Minneapolis Public Schools, focusing on the interrater reliability, scoring reliability, and validity of the assessment. The Minneapolis Math Problem Solving Assessment (MPSA) was established in 1991. Students are asked to solve…

This guide is intended to help project directors, coordinators, and other professional staff involved in developing and delivering workplace education programs do the following: understand the confidential nature of workplace education skills assessments and recommended measures in dealing with confidentiality; differentiate between the various…

Noting that effective teaching of language arts requires commitment to excellence on the part of classroom teachers, the goal of this book is to provide support, motivation, and knowledge for the classroom teacher who is responsible for the effective teaching of all children. Each chapter in the book contains features geared to the development of…

Standardized testing, usually in the form of a multiple choice test, has dominated educational reform throughout Mississippi for the past 2 decades. Because of the minimal impact that standardized testing has traditionally had on curriculum decisions and classroom instruction, a paradigm shift in assessment format was adopted in the State from a…

The collaborative efforts of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory have resulted in the State Student Assessment Program (SSAP) database. Information is collected annually about student assessment programs in each state, both in the area of traditional testing and in nontraditional…

The usefulness of authentic assessments as formative tools for teachers is well documented and supported. However, when educational institutions use these assessments as summative tools for evaluating programs and meeting accountability needs, several problems emerge. One set of problems relates to the difficulty of fitting authentic assessments…

There is a considerable interest at Educational Testing Service (ETS) to include performance-based, natural language constructed-response items on standardized tests. Such items can be developed, but the projected time and costs required to have these items scored by human graders would be prohibitive. In order for ETS to include these types of…

During a period when the reform-minded are very critical of the degree to which testing is actually related to the conditions for which data are employed, authentic assessment offers the opportunity to evaluate learning in settings closely related to the real world. It also allows the evaluator to tailor assessment conditions for individual…

The assessment problems in this guide offer K-2 teachers a beginning toward building a bank of math tasks that measure whether or not their students are becoming better problem solvers. The problems can be used as tools to use when teaching the strategies of effective problem solving and as informal assessments to help teachers see what their…

This document contains four papers presented at a symposium on performance improvement moderated by Edward Schorer at the 1996 conference of the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) "The Organizational Ecology of Ethical Problems: International Case Studies in the Light of HPT [Human Performance Technology]" (Peter J. Dean,…

The reliability and validity of three short forms of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children III (WISC-III) were compared. Each of the short forms was a tetrad composed of two verbal and two performance subtests. The first tetrad was selected based primarily on practical considerations, particularly its brevity to administer and score. The…

This paper reviews a year's work with third-grade teachers who introduced performance assessments in the hope of improving both instruction and assessment in mathematics. The 14 participating teachers in 3 schools tried many changes in their educational and assessment practices. Patterns of stability and change that resulted from their efforts…