Commemorating the work of Anne Cleary, the author considers the need for research on assessment in the practice context, provides an example of research in context, and proposes general areas of development for assessment research in the context of practice. Research has shown that effects of testing programs on practice are often not those that…

This book is a guide to the development and use of performance tasks and rubrics in the high school mathematics classroom. It contains a rationale for, and a discussion of strengths and limitations of, performance tasks to assess student achievement and progress in mathematics. A field-tested process is offered for developing performance tasks and…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a congressionally mandated survey of educational achievement of American students in a variety of curriculum areas and of changes in that achievement over time. The National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) has established new standards for reporting the results that determined three…

Lessons learned in changing a large-scale testing program are outlined. The redesigned Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) will be administered in spring 1994. Major changes for the verbal SAT section include more emphasis on critical reading, longer and more accessible passages, measurement of vocabulary in context, and use of double passages with two…

Issues related to between-class and within-class decomposition of achievement variance and the change of this decomposition over the course of the eighth-grade were examined using the Second International Mathematics Study (SIMS, 1985), a study in which there was a nested or hierarchical data structure of students within classes, within schools,…

This course guide for calculus offered at the high school level begins with an overview of the course. The overview includes a rationale for including calculus in the high school curriculum, a description and rationale of calculator and computer use in the calculus class, the desired qualifications and characteristics of calculus teachers,…

This report presents Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) performance results and results on the Texas Educational Assessment of Minimum Skills (TEAMS) in October 1990. This volume is comprised of the following sections: (1) Section I, an executive summary of TAAS performance for each grade level; (2) Section II, an overview of the program…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a congressionally mandated statistical survey of educational achievement of U.S. students in a variety of curriculum areas and of changes in that achievement over time. The National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) established new standards for reporting the results that resulted in three…

The adequacy of several approaches to estimation of proficiency distributions for the Trial State Assessment (TSA) in eighth grade mathematics of the National Assessment of Educational Progress was examined. These approaches are more restrictive than the estimation procedures originally used, with the same kind of plausible-values approach that…

The major goal of this study is to apply the essential unidimensionality statistic of W. Stout and the corresponding computer program (DIMTEST) to a hierarchical level mathematics achievement data set and to determine the extent to which the undimensional assumption can be accurately applied to mathematics achievement data. The study also…

Reports on the student assessment systems of states participating in the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory are presented. These reports were developed from the database of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. Detailed information about each state's student assessment program…

Mathematics contests, such as the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges' Student Mathematics League competition, are an excellent vehicle for identifying talented students and promoting mathematics scholarship. On-campus tournaments can supplement the Student Mathematics League national competition, by providing immediate feedback…

A study used four statistical item bias analysis strategies to determine the French cross-cultural validity of the Maine Educational Assessment, a standardized test administered in six content areas to students in grades 4, 8, and 11. Analysis was performed on eighth grade pupil performance in test year 1988-89, in the areas of the 100 common…

The purpose of this report is twofold. The first is to deliver an accurate portrayal of students' achievement in geometry and measurement as gleaned from the results of the 1986 Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program (MEAP). The second is to provide K-12 teachers of mathematics with activities that have proven to be helpful in encouraging…

The efficacy of an early mathematics program aimed at developing number sense and built entirely on children's invented procedures and on their informally acquired quantitative knowledge was studied. To socialize children to think of themselves as reasoners about numbers, the classroom program routinely provided daily conversation about numbers…