Portfolio assessment is an alternative form of assessment that is particularly attractive to adult, career, and vocational educators because it includes the assessment of active learning and performance rather than the mere recall of memorized facts. Portfolio assessment serves the interests of business and industry by forging a connection between…

Assessment of practice at diploma, degree, and postgraduate levels in nursing and midwifery education in Britain was the focus of a research study. Key issues from a critical review of literature on the assessment of theory and practice at different academic levels were as follows: lack of clarity in defining "levels"; inconsistencies in…

Professional evaluation of career counseling programs is becoming increasingly important as funding becomes more limited and accountability more pervasive. This digest describes a Canadian approach used by an outside team to evaluate seven small career counseling programs. Evaluators addressed two basic goals: appraise the effectiveness and…

In this digest, "career counseling" refers to activities intended to improve individuals' ability to make career decisions. Studies have shown that career counseling helps individuals as much as well-developed psychological, educational, or behavioral interventions. But more studies are needed to explain this phenomenon; this digest…

The purpose of this research study was to determine if the implementation of a social skills curriculum would have a positive effect on the performance of severely emotionally or behaviorally disordered students (SEBD). The program studied was the Boys' Town Educational Model (BTEM). Student performance was defined in terms of reading recognition…

School researchers and administrators are developing new ways to measure student skills and progress, using portfolios, self-evaluation, verbal answers to mathematics problems, and other assessment formats. This book explains the assessment reform movement and describes programs across the country that have embraced new forms of assessment.…

Changes in assessment practices are central to ongoing reform efforts in science and mathematics education. The education community is currently focused on new ways to measure, evaluate, and report students' progress toward standards and learning goals. The focus of this publication, using assessment for informing and improving instruction is not…

In testing, educators have two competing intentions. They want to be fair in allowing students to demonstrate what they know without creating testing conventions and formats that let students pretend to know. Teaching-the-test literature shows that test scores can be inflated, meaning that they can go up without a generalized increase in…

This annotated bibliography of 66 resources was developed as part of a federally funded project in Minnesota to promote the participation of students with limited English proficiency (LEP) and students with disabilities in the Minnesota Graduation Standards. Specifically, the project is encouraging participation in the Basic Standards Exams of…

This paper reports on the development and utilization of the professional portfolio in the University of San Francisco's (California) teacher education program. It reviews the rationale and guidelines for using this performance-based teacher assessment model, reports the results of a survey of 45 recent credential program graduates' use of the…

This document reports a study that examined implementation processes for new workplace practices--nonterritorial offices--in five international organizations in four countries. The organizations are IBM and Ernst & Young in the United Kingdom; Digital Equipment's Natural Office in Sweden; SOL Cleaning Company headquarters in Finland; and…

This book discusses how to use everyday data to create strategies for educational improvement in schools. It provides users with a process for building a performance indicator system, identifying the most important aspects of a school's innovational efforts and traps to avoid that may lead to misinterpretation of data. The introduction identifies…

This comprehensive guide to alternative, authentic assessment in early childhood education provides discussions of the most current research and practical ways to integrate assessments into teaching. It shows assessment as a process that teachers can use in their own classrooms, using the latest procedures, such as portfolios, standards,…

Given the importance of mentoring in the academic context and in light of the weaknesses of previous research, this study proposed five objectives. Analyses of surveys from 145 students across 12 universities and diverse disciplines revealed first of all, a demographic profile of the typical graduate student protege and faculty mentor. Second, 10…

The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 called for the U.S. Department of Education to prepare an Annual Performance Plan which links the Department's budget request with its Strategic Plan. To meet that directive, Volume 1 of the Department's Strategic Plan for 1999 is presented here. It includes objective performance plans and shows…