The Texas Educational Assessment of Minimum Skills (TEAMS) was developed by the Texas Education Agency (TEA), in response to Texas House Bill 72 (1984), which mandated a new basic skills assessment program for mathematics, reading, and writing at grades 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11. This is one in a series of Instructional Strategies Guides designed to…

This guide is intended to provide persons involved in the transition of handicapped youth from school to work with a systematic means of implementing transition and disseminating information about resources that may assist the process. The guide is organized in six sections. The first section provides an overview of transition, while the second…

Developed by early childhood educators at the classroom, system, state, and university levels and tested in six school systems, this handbook has been prepared to help kindergarten teachers in Georgia plan, implement, and evaluate their own programs. In addition to introductory material stating the philosophy of the program, principles of child…

This booklet describes a number of activities initiated in the State of New Jersey to improve academic standards and to help teachers prepare their students for taking New Jersey's High School Proficiency Test (HSPT). The HSPT, administered to all public school ninth graders, is more demanding than the previously used Minimum Basic Skills Test.…

This three-part document provides strategies for evaluating the impact of a province-wide testing program in Ontario (Canada) and reviews the literature on the impact of testing. Part One identifies the effects of province-wide examinations for selected high school courses and proposes four studies to monitor these effects: (1) an analysis of data…

Articles in seven newsletters of the Intercultural Development Research Association's Mental Health Research Project emphasize community mental health, human, and child welfare services to Mexican Americans, particularly in Texas. Topics include social policy formation in child welfare services, utilization of community mental health clinics…

Alaskan students' scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) increased nine points between 1984 and 1985, matching the national gain. These scores marked the fourth year of increases following 17 years of consistently declining scores. Thirty-three percent of Alaska's high school seniors took the SAT in 1985. The combined score of 923 was 17…

State-sponsored programs that seek to attract college students to teaching by student financial aid, primarily through loan "forgiveness," are discussed, based on a survey of chief state school officers. The programs have focused on loans, and the most commonly employed form of assistance enables the recipient to repay a portion of the…

Programs of school improvement based on characteristics of effective schools as identified by school effects researchers have proliferated in recent years. This paper describes major school improvement programs now underway throughout the United States: (1) programs organized and administered within schools and school districts in New York City;…

This report summarized the Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory (McREL) State Policy Program activities for 1985. McREL addressed the task of defining school quality by sponsoring meetings of regional deans of education in order to create interest in McREL's effective school activities and to encourage change in teacher education…

Four presentations from the 1985 Annual Michigan School Testing Conference on "Assessing Higher Order Skills" are offered in this paper, and the chairman of the First General Session provides an introductory section. The papers individually and collectively address the problem of defining higher order thinking skills. A second major…

Results of the Wisconsin Pupil Assessment Program's 1984 test administrations are summarized. A sample of 16,000 public school students were tested. Tests included objective-referenced tests in writing and understanding of economics, and the norm-referenced Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (CTBS) test of reading, mathematics, and language.…

This statement of the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada, reflects the provincial ministers' concern with ensuring that opportunities for participation in Canada's postsecondary institutions are available to those who can benefit from them, and in particular to those with special needs. An introductory section notes the growth of…

This document reprints a series of articles appearing in the Parsippany, New Jersey, "Daily Record" on October 25-30, 1987 and November 9, 1987. The series stresses that the New Jersey special education system has vastly improved from what existed prior to the 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act, but that the system still…

Diverse information is compiled to begin to address the question of how well students in Alaska are achieving. In 1987, each of the 55 districts in Alaska submitted results of its standardized testing program for Reading, Reading Comprehension, Mathematics, Mathematics Problem Solving, and Language Arts for the three school years from 1984-85…