This report provides a performance review of a Texas school district. For the review, investigators interviewed district employees, school-board members, students, parents, business leaders, and representatives from community organizations. The review team also held public forums, conducted focus-group sessions and personal interviews, surveyed…

This resource guide was published as part of the college-wide assessment and evaluation activities at Columbia Basin College (Washington) in 1997. The purpose in producing the document was to meet the need for some guidelines and written information about how to develop an assessment plan, the different ways to assess that plan, and how to use the…

This paper asserts that through foundations courses in teacher education programs, all preservice teachers, not only social studies teachers, should come to understand the concept of cultural influence through an examination of the philosophical, ideological, and historical past. This paper examines the subject-matter content, authentic assessment…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a performance-based assessment system newly implemented in a graduate education (Masters of Education) program was related to the development of adult learners' cognitive skills. This assessment system required that learners develop and maintain a professional teaching portfolio showing evidence…

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) was founded in 1987 in response to recommendations regarding the central role of teachers in educational quality. NBPTS establishes rigorous standards for what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do; operates a national voluntary system to assess and certify teachers…

This study examines the importance of using effectiveness indicators for assessing institutional outcomes, and their congruence with actual or potential use in making institutional change and improvement, in selected northwest community colleges. The study was undertaken in response to the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges' transition…

To make the transition from traditional assessment, which was often counterproductive, to an array of assessment applications that will be more constructive for students, teachers must expand their vision of the relationship between assessment and effective schools. Assessment must be used to inform classroom decision making, and it must become…

The Class Size/Early Intervention Program in Iowa includes documentation of successful early literacy development as a component of a program to support maximum success for young children. This document is designed to support educators in identifying literacy assessment tools for kindergarten through third grade in Iowa public schools. The…

This digest addresses the role of evaluation and its basic logic, and provides a description of how the field is structured. In order to reach evaluative conclusions it is usually necessary to establish or identify factual promises and value premises. To obtain the required kind of overall evaluative conclusion, it is typically necessary to…

The expert contributors to this volume tell how state laws and policies have stacked the deck against charter schools by limiting the number of charter schools allowed in a state, forbidding for-profit firms from holding charters, forcing them to pay rent out of operating funds, and other ways. They explain how these policies can be amended to…

Administrators can structure successful transitions to standards-based curriculum and performance assessment. By thinking about this reform initiative's implications, building opportunities for thoughtful experimentation and dialogue, and anticipating dilemmas teachers might encounter during experimentation, administrators can design responsive…

By expanding her teaching and assessment strategies according to multiple-intelligence principles, a New Hope, Pennsylvania high school teacher has reinvigorated her social studies classes. To evaluate her work and her students' progress, she developed a form called the Multiple Intelligences Inventory. She generally alternates a…

Although a constructivist approach to learning calls into question the adequacy of norm-referenced, multiple-choice tests, these tests will persist into the 21st century. This article describes a classroom-based study that helped collaboratively oriented fifth graders develop problem-solving strategies to select answers to test questions. This…

The development of an online performance assessment instrument, the Assessment of Motor and Process Skills, is reported. Issues addressed include development, implementation, and validation of the scoring rubric in an extended Rasch model, rater training, and implementation of the assessment in a computerized program. (SLD)

Examined the performance of middle school students with learning disabilities (N=86) or without (N=39) on the Science Appraisal Battery. Questions required either verbal answers or hands-on activities with no time limits. Regular education students outperformed students with learning disabilities on all portions of the test and on both verbal and…