Secondary vocational-technical education programs in Mississippi are faced with many challenges resulting from sweeping educational reforms at the national and state levels. Schools and teachers are increasingly being held accountable for providing true learning activities to every student in the classroom. This accountability is measured through…

Preservice teachers enrolled in the first portion of an undergraduate education program at the Florida State University were assigned to develop case studies based on their experience working in local elementary schools. The case studies were to include research from the scholarly literature of the field using a rubric developed by the instructor…

The purpose of this briefing paper is to review common approaches to performance evaluation in accountability systems, in order to recommend a workable approach for California Community colleges, as the system seeks to meet the requirements of district-level accountability required by AB 1417. The recommendations within this paper capture commonly…

Students should realize that writing is a process of discovery which transcends the English classroom. Writing only about literature limits their experiences. The types of writing assessed on the Georgia Middle Grades Writing Assessment (MGWA) are: Narrative Writing, Persuasive Writing, and Report Writing (Expository). This MGWA guide is divided…

This document deals with testing in intermediate communication arts for seventh graders in Missouri public schools. The document contains the following items from the Session 1 Test Booklet: "Swimming in Snow" (Diana C. Conway) (Items 1, 2, and 5); "Discovery" (Marion Dane Bauer) (Item 13); writing prompt; and a writer's…

This document deals with testing in intermediate communication arts for seventh graders in Missouri public schools. The document contains the following items from the Test Booklet: "Under the Rice Moon" (Rhiannon Puck); "Dogspirit" (Gary Paulsen) (Session 1, Items 4, 5, 6, and 8); a writing prompt; and a writer's checklist. It…

This document deals with testing in communication arts for 11th graders in Missouri public schools. The document contains a short poem "Signs for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt" (David Bottoms) for students to read and gives four questions for students to answer (Items 15, 16, 17, and 18) in Session 1. It also provides scoring guides…

This document deals with testing in communication arts for seventh graders in Missouri public schools. The document first provides an article about adventures on and around an island near the coast of Nova Scotia entitled "The Secret of the Oak Island Money Pit" (Sharon Barry). The document instructs students to read the article and then…

An ACER (Australian Council for Educational Research) study on literacy and numeracy was established in 1999 with 1000 children from a random national sample of 100 schools. The children in the study began their schooling at the beginning of 1999. Many students transferred to other schools since the study began and have been tracked in their new…

Feedback from assessments should be the foundation for improvements students make in their lab work. Therefore, in this study, a standard rubric that reflected the scientific method was employed as an intervention to assess student lab write-ups. Students preformed three labs all based on consumer research. The first lab was completed without the…

This paper describes how one university professor discovered a gap between her explanation of a class assignment (analyzing a content textbook) and students' comprehension of the assignment. After attending a workshop, she revised all assignments for the content reading course and designed a grading rubric for each assignment. The assignment…

Elementary education teacher candidates (n=62) proposed four criteria they used to identify a best lesson plan developed and taught for posting to their electronic portfolio. Criteria include a lesson that students enjoyed, learned from, actively participated in, and were involved in conducting research. The two criteria shared by all teacher…

This study examined approaches to action research held by science, education, and mathematics faculty and how they convert ideas to action research proposals and plan to gather and analyze their research data. The study also described some of the research outcomes of successful action research projects. Rubrics were used on a diverse set of…

This book is intended as a practical guide to implementing a standards-based curriculum, developing performance tasks, teaching to those tasks, and using performance assessments. The chapters are: (1) "Establishing the Foundations"; (2) "Understanding the Achievement Cycle"; (3) "Focusing on Authentic Learning"; (4) "Building on a Standards-Based…

The essay on the writing section of the SAT will be scored using a holistic approach. In holistic scoring, a piece of writing is considered as a total piece of work--the whole of which is greater than the sum of its parts.