When mobile assessment tools was first introduced to teachers at Kyffin Elementary School in Jefferson Country, Colorado, teachers were not comfortable with the technology. According to Blanche Kapushion, principal at Kyffin, teachers were not used to using technology in class, and it did not look like that was going to change. Nonetheless,…

A large number of American elementary school students are now studying science using the hands-on inquiry curricula developed in the 1990s: Insights; Full Option Science System (FOSS); and Science and Technology for Children (STC). A goal of these programs, echoed in the "National Science Education Standards," is that children should…

Purpose: Currently under the No Child Left Behind Act, cut scores of successive cohorts of students are used to identify schools that are successful and others that are failing. For many schools, however, this score does not provide an accurate, fair, or comprehensive performance assessment. The focus of this study is to compare three alternative…

A conceptual model was developed in an urban undergraduate education institution in the US to assess teaching performance and intellectual development levels of teacher candidates. Danielson's framework of teaching performance and Perry's pattern of intellectual and ethical development were used for developing a conceptual model. A pilot study was…

In September 1998, the California State Legislature passed SB 2042, legislation that authorized the reform of teacher recruitment, certification, and licensing in the state. Its provisions are unique in that they represent the first time in California's history that almost all of the standards dealing with teacher preparation and induction were…

As a result of the pressures of educational reform and high-stakes assessment, some schools run the risk of foregoing active, student-centered learning activities for building test-taking skills and the memorization of discrete facts (Gredler, 1999; Jackson & Davis, 2000). Coupled with the additional pressure to fulfill the expectations of…

Although past research indicates that giving brief quizzes, administered either regularly or randomly, may lead to improvement in students' performance on major exams, negligible research has targeted daily writing activities that require the processing of course information at a deeper level than might result from simply reading course materials…

Learning performance assessment aims to evaluate what knowledge learners have acquired from teaching activities. Objective technical measures of learning performance are difficult to develop, but are extremely important for both teachers and learners. Learning performance assessment using learning portfolios or web server log data is becoming an…

This article is a summary of our working group's continued discourse from the Conference on English Education (CEE) Summit, where our discussions focused on English teacher candidate competencies, program assessment, the Standards and Guidelines, and National Council of Teachers of English's (NCTE's) roles and responsibilities. For the purpose of…

Student assessment, from the classroom to the state and national levels, is changing. The era of norm-referenced, multiple choice, standardized tests may be coming to an end, to be replaced by other forms of assessment, not all equally good. This guide outlines a vision of what assessment in the service of learning can be and provides ideas,…

This research project represents phase 1 of a longitudinal study involving sixth graders in an English-as-a-Second-Language middle school classroom. Research activities focus on the development and implementation of portfolio management strategies for these students. It was believed that developing an efficient system to teach these students how…

This monograph, which was developed for home economics teachers, describes six alternative assessment techniques and contains sample assessment instruments and guide sheets. Discussed in the introduction are factors contributing to the increasing popularity of alternative assessment and the distinguishing features of the alternative assessment…

Key pieces of information that are currently available and relevant to setting targets for achievement are organized to help inform goal setting. These include levels of academic proficiency during elementary school, middle school, and high school; rates of high school completion; and levels of literacy of young adults. Much of the information is…

This paper describes the task analysis of performance-based science tasks that were designed for the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment, now postponed until 1996, and field tested in 1993. A brief description of the science performance tasks is followed by a description of the task analyses performed and a…

On-line performance assessment was developed to maximize the usefulness of performance assessment and to minimize the time and labor costs incurred. This paper reports on the development of an on-line performance assessment instrument, focusing on the establishment and validation of the scoring rubric and its implementation in the Rasch model, the…