Maintains that three curriculum goals (understanding, appreciation, and life application) lie at the core of constructivist teaching and should guide methods of assessment. Authentic assessment techniques could include the evaluation of students' written positions on important issues, descriptions of what they have learned, and student portfolios.…

Examines the nature of outcomes-based assessment and reporting systems in language education, noting problems that may arise in their development and implementation by presenting case studies of assessment innovations in the United Kingdom and Australia, which experienced various political, technical, and practical problems. The relationship…

A non-science undergraduate course provided an opportunity for constructivist design, (i.e., provide learners with personal control, authentic learning contexts and diverse personal interactions including collaboration) using the World Wide Web, e-mail, and video. Describes the course design, implementation, and evaluation. Concludes authentic…

The New Standards Project, attempting to create an assessment system comprised of performance exams, portfolios and projects, may not have fulfilled its promise to create a national system of tests worth teaching to. However, NSP did deliver high- quality professional-development opportunities for hundreds of teachers across the nation. (Contains…

Explores issues of whose work is actually being evaluated when raters outside the classroom context make judgments about students based on work composed with the support of peers, teachers, and parents. Data from an evaluation of a statewide assessment and a study of scoring elementary school writing portfolios illustrate the issues. (SLD)

In Bangor, Maine, a seamless, continuous-progress performance assessment in reading is evolving--all because 24 first-grade teachers objected to using standardized achievement tests. Teachers have developed the Bangor Assessment of Reading (BAR), a triennial process of assessing fluency, meaning construction, comprehension, reading strategies, and…

Charter schools, performance contracts, and school choice programs are among the initiatives for change that can be made into an integrated program for reforming urban education, one that shifts from a bureaucratic and archaic system into a deregulated system that focuses on student performance. (SLD)

Advocates using portfolio assessment in music education, more as a teaching tool than a final evaluative instrument. Explains those advantages and disadvantages of portfolio assessment that are peculiar to music education. Discusses materials for inclusion. (MJP)

Describes research on the development of a measure of student metacognition. The brief, domain-independent measure serves as a collateral measure in construct validation, supporting exploration of the self-regulatory demands of performance assessment. Results show that metacognition can be directly and explicitly measured in the context of…

Current information systems streamline traditional information and seldom describe the relationship between two data sets (like test scores and GPAs) or between teaching and learning transactions. Transaction processing systems need to be developed for schools. Teachers' knowledge of student learning is essential for developing responsive…

The study assesses the effects of a hypertext learning aid and GPA on performance in advanced financial accounting. Results indicate that the type of learning aid and GPA significantly affect performance. High GPA students performed better than did the low GPA students. In the study, two versions of the hypertext learning aid were utilized by two…

As the continuing medical education (CME) enterprise evolved over the last half century, a variety of rules, national and state regulations, and reporting requirements developed, with a resultant substantial variation in what is required of a physician. That CME needs fundamental reform is not news to those who read the literature. Yet many of the…

This research examined 2 strategies for encouraging children's narratives. Twenty-five European American and 31 African American children from low-income backgrounds (M age = 4.76) participated. Children were assigned randomly to either high or low elaborative narrative style conditions and to either a draw-and-tell or tell-only reporting…

In powerful learning environments, rich contexts and authentic tasks are presented to pupils. Active, autonomous and co-operative learning is stimulated, and the curriculum is adapted to the needs and capabilities of individual pupils. In this study, the characteristics of learning environments and the contribution of ICT to learning environments…

I take up Silliman's challenge to explore the "moral logic" of "structural racism" largely absent in my book, "I'm Not a Racist, But..." I criticize and build on Glenn Loury's account of the normative assessment of racial inequality by examining three factors generating such disparities in educational achievement--stereotyping, performance-based…