The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is an ongoing, congressionally mandated national survey of the knowledge, skills, and understanding of young Americans in major subjects usually taught in school. This document is a guide to the files of the first NAEP Trial State Assessment (1990). The Trial State Assessment collected…

State program practices in norm-referenced testing (NRT) are described as found in the 1990-91 school year and prior years to provide information on years of administration of the same test and the age of the norms. All 50 State Departments of Education were surveyed in 2 stages. States without NRT were asked to described their testing policies;…

Quality Performance Accreditation (QPA), as mandated by the Kansas State Board of Education, requires schools to document student learning through multiple assessment strategies and requires students to participate in state-developed assessments in reading, writing, mathematics, and science. The Kansas National Education Association has joined…

Effects of assessment on curriculum and instruction were studied in an investigation that considered local educators' reactions to statewide minimum competency testing, the instructional effects of implementing these tests, and variations within each state. The two states examined were Pennsylvania, a low-stakes situation with relatively minor…

The New Standards Project is a joint effort of the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC) at the University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) and the National Center on Education and the Economy toward creation of a national examination system based on performance assessments. This study explored the feasibility of comparing performance on…

As the latest in a series of studies analyzing the data reported on Tennessee's school district report cards, this paper focuses on finding a common statistical treatment to examine the impact of predictor variables on dependent variables. Investigations of the 1988-89 report card data explored the relationships among eight school district…

The Assembly Education Committee of the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services held a hearing pursuant to Assembly Resolution 113, a proposal directing the Committee to investigate the skills testing program developed and administered to New Jersey children by the State Department of Education. The Committee was interested in the eighth-grade…

Educators' perceptions of the effects of state mandated testing on instructional practices and curricular decisions were studied. An ethnographic interview study was conducted with 30 fifth- and sixth-grade teachers and 12 principals from Illinois, New York, and Tennessee. Forty-one of the 42 respondents agreed to have their interviews audiotaped.…

An attempt is made to summarize the perspectives and relevant experience of state-level higher education leadership in responding to the proposals for national assessment resulting from Goal V, Objective 5, of the National Education Goals, which calls for improvement in the critical thinking, ability to communicate, and problem-solving ability of…

A statistical comparison was made of two test batteries, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) and the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB), using a sample of 406 subjects (98 civilian high school students and 308 military recruit examinees). The sample was predominantly white and male. A first analyses described the sample and…

The Colorado "Standards and Assessment Resource Bank" on CD-ROM contains updated information about the Colorado Student Assessment Program, the text of the "Standards-Based Classroom Operator's Manual," and a bank of standards-based units, assessments, and staff development materials submitted by Colorado teachers and school…

The report presents findings concerning the language proficiency of elementary, middle, and high school students receiving bilingual services in the Las Cruces Public Schools (New Mexico). The report contains five sections: general information about the bilingual program in the school district; the Idea Language Proficiency Tests (IPT); results of…

This report compares information gathered from the Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) test administrations of 1986 and 1988 with data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests given those same years (mathematics and science in 1986 and reading and United States history in 1988). The focus is on how…

The Grade 12 Diploma Examinations Program of the Alberta (Canada) schools has three main purposes: to certify the level of individual student achievement in selected grade-12 courses; to ensure that province-wide standards of achievement are maintained; and to report individual and group results. Eight grade-12 courses have diploma examinations…

This paper extends the factor analytic research of C. W. Swartz and others (1990) on the North Carolina Teaching Performance Appraisal Instrument (NCTPAI), which contains 28 teaching practices grouped into 5 functions (management of instructional time, management of student behavior, instructional presentation, instructional monitoring, and…