Presents findings from investigation of the validity of the Arnett Caregiver Interaction Scale, CIS (1989), in preschools in Concepcion, Chile. Demonstrates the reliability and validity of the scale to evaluate the interaction of the childhood educator with young children, suggesting changes to the scale. Notes differences found for school type.…

Penetrates polarized rhetoric to examine four currently debated questions about high-stakes testing. Reframes certain questions: How can we provide instruction enabling students to score well on such tests without narrowing the curriculum? How can we restructure schools to help all children reach high standards? How can assessments be made more…

Examined validity of attachment-based measures of parent-child relationships designed for 9- to 12-year-olds. Measures included self-reports of perceptions of security and avoidant and preoccupied coping, a projective interview assessing attachment state of mind, parents' reports of willingness to serve as an attachment figure, and ratings of…

Aserts that it is unclear how the Ages and Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional ratings link to other critical child and family risk factors. Identifies questions regarding how well individual dimensions of social behavior are measured and concerns about the partial overlap between competent and problem behavior. Expresses concerns about the…

Warns against the declining standards of the Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. history examination and the AP program. Focuses on the problems that occur in maintaining high standards and the practive of teaching to the test in AP courses. Discusses who does grade and who should grade the AP examinations. (CMK)

Undergraduates completed the new Civic Attitudes and Skills Questionnaire designed to measure attitudes, skills, and behavioral intentions that might be affected by service learning participation. Factor analyses were used to define six scales. The scales' reliability and validity were found to be adequate. (EV)

Following a review of the literature on anomie and academic dishonesty at the university level, this paper reports on a survey of 300 undergraduate business students in Australia which found the newly developed measure both reliable and valid for measuring actual cheating and plagiarism. Concludes that universities need to foster development of an…

Examines the validity of large-scale educational assessment, suggesting that construct validity is insufficient for assuming an achievement measure's internal validity and that the uses of assessment results affect external validity. Discusses the role of learning theory in large-scale assessment, purposes of large-scale assessment, item types and…

Accommodations are test-administration changes that do not change the underlying construct being measured. The Individuals with Disabilities legislation and regulations provide little guidance on implementing assessment accommodations for students with learning disabilities. Certain research-based checklists or rating scales help link…

Used an empirically based strategy to develop a measure of ethnic identity among American Indian adolescents, focusing on degree to which respondents identified with Indian culture and with White culture. Exploratory factor analysis examined the structure of ethnic identity, and resulting models were tested with confirmatory factor analysis.…

Compares English programs in schools that were "Beating the Odds" (that is, whose students were performing unusually well on locally important tests when compared with students in schools serving similar populations) with English programs whose students were performing more typically. Discusses five features of the successful programs. (SG)

Considers how standards and high-stakes testing corrupts instruction. Notes that the cyclic nature of scope-and-sequence standards, isolated instructional practices, and isolated items on tests is a closed system that has no authentic purpose beyond the academic hallways of schools. Concludes that reading and writing are individual acts at the…

Counselor educators need to be able to demonstrate their effectiveness in training new counselors; however, currently few valid or reliable measures exist for assessing educators' impact. The authors describe the development of such an instrument, the Counseling Skills Scale. They began by revising an existing scale and then they solicited…

Approximately 1,700 English language learners (ELLs) and former ELL students, in Grades 4 and 10, were tested using both an English-language (Stanford Achievement Test, 9th ed.) and a Spanish-language (Aprenda, 2nd ed.) achievement test. Their performances on the two tests were contrasted. The results showed that ELL students, for the most part,…

Initial validation was sought for the Life-Challenges Questionnaire-Teen Form, a 120-item youth-risk assessment tool. The questionnaire was administered to 99 students enrolled in an adolescent detention facility and a comparison group of 305 students attending high school. The survey items included correlates of youth violence and categorized…