A national survey of 133 secondary vocational educators examined practices and perceptions toward grading students with disabilities. The majority of respondents included a competency-based grading component, believed that student effort should be used to determine grades, and had never been involved in their students' Individualized Education…

Assesses Foxfire Teacher Outreach Program using data from surveys, classroom observations, and site-visitation. Describes how participating teachers incorporated "Foxfire philosophy" in classroom. Discusses evaluation, school climate, teacher burnout, and data's implications for program. Concludes that Foxfire training benefited…

Presents a five-day study unit that provides positive and negative views of Columbus' voyages. Explains that lessons include reading and writing assignments culminating in a debate of the implications of the Columbian legacy. Offers questions designed to prompt students to defend their views on Columbus. Identifies instructional objectives and…

Discusses aspects of cooperative problem solving that include the selection of appropriate problems and the grading of group and individual papers using an analytical scoring scale. Offers six tips for grading cooperative problem solving. An appendix provides solutions to cited problems, potential follow-up questions, and an annotated…

The development of communicative competence and the role of cultural context in the communicative interaction of four young Inuit children and their caregivers was studied ethnographically. Caregiver accommodations to Inuit children differed in many ways from those reported for White middle class North Americans. The paper calls for culturally…

Forty-eight adults with mental retardation assessed their daily living competency using the revised Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales. Compared to subject and counselor interviews and demonstrated competency, the self-evaluation yielded highly consistent results on domains measuring adaptive skills, though subjects underreported problematic…

Criterion-related validity data are presented on 3 methods for assessing reading comprehension, based on 26 learning-disabled middle school students. The standard cloze test and multiple-choice cloze test produced moderate correlations, although the traditional scoring method was considered inappropriate. The story retell procedures demonstrated…

Several dimensions of early identification of disabling conditions are discussed, including the relationship between early identification and prevention. Preventative components are described for child find, screening, assessment, and program planning. Assumptions behind screening and assessment guidelines are discussed, emphasizing the assumption…

Two approaches to measurement for instructional decision making (specific subskill mastery measurement and general outcome measurement) are described and illustrated with case studies. The paper concludes that measuring general outcome indicators can bridge traditional and contemporary assessment paradigms to form an innovative approach to…

This article describes the use (in Minneapolis, Minnesota) of curriculum-based measurement (CBM) to monitor reading progress, including development of CBM reading probes, administration and scoring of the CBM reading test, determination of appropriate measurement levels, setting of long-range goals, and program evaluation. Research in this area is…

This study of curriculum-based assessment of the reading ability of four elementary-level students with learning disabilities found that individual-referenced tests are powerful for understanding instructional effects, whereas norm-referenced tests are best suited for determining deployment and allocation of resources. (DB)

Examines the processes involved in building instructional systems that are based on artificial intelligence and hypermedia technologies. Traditional instructional systems design methodology is discussed; design issues including system architecture and learning strategies are addressed; and a new methodology for building knowledge-based…

Small group work has grown in use throughout the 1980s. Reported are six issues that were raised concerning small groups resulting from a series of workshops for university students in which the students worked on problems in groups, jointly planned tasks, and critiquing their use during their practice experience. (MDH)

Data are presented that demonstrate the reliability and construct validity of a 27-item behaviorally anchored rating scale (BARS) used to rate the performance of 757 nursing assistants in South Carolina. Results support the reliability and construct validity of the BARS and the usefulness of the BARS approach for evaluation. (SLD)

Procedures for obtaining student samples for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and deriving survey weights for analysis of survey data are described. Sample designs are economically and operationally feasible, and weighting procedures result in increased precision of estimates as they account for the probabilities of student…