The New York City Board of Education's Comprehensive Instructional Management Systems-Communication Arts (CIMS-CA) project is described in this report. The introductory section provides background information on the project (implemented in 1980), the primary goal of which was to develop a holistic communication arts curriculum for kindergarten…

A study was conducted to determine if there were significant differences in vision between beginning readers who learn to read easily and those who learn with difficulty (dyslexics). In addition, the study examined the mean of the high achievers (rather than expert opinion) to discover the degree to which visual efficiency was normally needed for…

A study examined the use of lookback strategy (selective rereading of text material to clarify inconsistent information) employed by good and poor readers attempting to monitor their own reading comprehension. Using microcomputers, narrative and expository texts containing inconsistencies were presented one line at a time on a "page" of…

In the Illinois public community colleges, disadvantaged student grant funds are allocated by formula, with each eligible college receiving a basic grant of $20,000, and the remaining appropriation distributed to each district based on the number of credit hours produced in the remedial and adult basic and secondary education funding categories…

Studies indicate that American students have an inadequate understanding of world affairs, with implications for United States national security, business interests in foreign markets, and education in general, and specific recommendations have been made for the improvement of foreign language instruction. Foreign language education in the 1980s…

Four discrimination indices were compared, using score distributions which were normal, bimodal, and negatively skewed. The score distributions were systematically varied to represent the common circumstances of a military training situation using criterion-referenced mastery tests. Three 20-item tests were administered to 110 simulated subjects.…

The effectiveness of an Education Consolidation Improvement Act Chapter 1 program was studied in a large urban school district. A common problem in evaluating remedial programs is that pretest/posttest achievement gains often indicate the effects of the entire curriculum, rather than those specific to the remedial class. In this district, over…

This paper focuses on the importance and the significance of the teacher's mastery of an abstract body of knowledge that underlies an educational innovation. Concepts and principles from organizational sociology are applied in order to investigate the relationship between teacher's mastery of this body of knowledge and the process of…

In response to low college-going rates and low persistence rates of college students, Clark Technical College (CTC) initiated the High School Liaison Project to improve articulation between the college and local schools. The project served as an umbrella for several related activities, including a program for assessing the potential college skills…

The scientific concept of intelligence has been heavily influenced by the technology of measurement. The variables which can be measured have been made the operational definition of intelligence. This approach differs from a deductive approach, in which a theory of cognition in general is used to derive the sorts of measurements that must be taken…

This investigation of the effect of typing skill on using a word processor for composition hypothesized that students who had learned keyboarding skills would: (1) write longer essays when using a word processor; (2) revise their essays more when using a word processor; (3) feel more positive about typing when using a word processor than students…

The process used by the Texas Education Agency to update public school teacher certification tests in a statewide program in Texas is described. The testing program implemented is called the Examination for the Certification of Educators in Texas. After a policy review, advisory committees for 63 test areas prepared content frameworks, created…

The proliferation of minimum competency testing in recent years has not resulted in a critical analysis of the construct validity of such tests. The present study examined the dimensionality and construct validity of an urban life skills competency test (the 1987 eighth-grade Chicago Minimum Proficiency Skills Test (MPST) via linear analysis. The…

The Conference on English and Mathematics brought together 100 faculty members from the California Community Colleges and the California State University to address such topics as curricular standards; admission, placement, and exit testing; improvement of transition from upper- to lower-division study; and the integration of English and…

This document consists of volumes 1-9 of the Mathematics Association of America's (MAA) Placement Test Program Newsletter. The MAA is the professional association primarily concerned with undergraduate education in mathematics. It has responded to the increasingly difficult problem of placing freshmen students in mathematics courses by developing…