This document discusses the various problems students and teachers face in Asian language education programs at both the elementary secondary and university levels. Asian languages are much more difficult to learn than more commonly-taught languages like French or Spanish, and the available curriculum and testing materials are inadequate. There…

Development of the Welcome Center for immigrants and refugees in the School District of Philadelphia is chronicled. The program emerged from dialogue between the Task Force for the Education of Asian Immigrants and Refugee Students and the Philadelphia School District, and began operation under the aegis of the Department of Foreign Language…

The Teacher Evaluation and Assessment Center (TEAC) was established by the Department of Education at the University of South Florida in 1984 to serve the state in the certification of trainers and observers of the Florida Performance Measurement System (FPMS) and to score and report performance evaluations for special programs. This report…

One in a series of reading, writing, and mathematics subject booklets offered to acquaint teachers with the skills tested in each content area on the New Jersey High School Proficiency Test, this booklet on reading presents material that can be used in lesson planning and preparation of materials to ensure coverage of all skills throughout the…

This document is the third annual status report of the Spencerport (New York) More Effective Schools/Teaching Project. Section 1 describes nine documents developed during the project; identifies persons participating in the project; states the applicability of effective schools research to all levels of a suburban school system; and sets forth the…

This volume is divided into full formal paper manuscripts and 200-word abstracts of presentations that were made without submitting formal papers. The 73 papers presented in full represent recent research and applications in the field of computer-based instruction. They are organized into 13 sections by special interest group: (1) Computer-Based…

The current status of the teaching of oral and aural skills in university French language courses in Great Britain is examined. A review of survey results finds that French teaching at the university level remains much as it was 20 to 30 years ago despite increasing calls for change, and that more serious attempts at change are found in Scottish…

A basic-skills testing remediation model for older, reentry college juniors was studied longitudinally and cross-validated against previous findings. Attention was directed to the rates of academic success and attrition for students entering an upper-division university in 1981 as juniors and seniors and majoring in business administration. The…

This report concerns a descriptive study undertaken in 1982-1983 as part of the Second International Science Study (SISS) under the auspices of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) for the purpose of examining key elements of K-12 science instruction in the United States. Special attention was directed…

Criticism of standardized tests is extensive, and a number of claims of test misuse have been made. Test misuse is discussed in six common circumstances. (1) Test users accept the title of a test as an accurate and complete description of the variable being measured, not having full knowledge of the test, its items, and the test manual. A…

A study was conducted at Miami-Dade Community College (MDCC) to provide data on the basic skills performance of first-time-in-college students who graduated from area public high schools between August 1982 and September 1983 and enrolled at MDCC in fall 1983. The entering basic skills performance of students who graduated in the top 20% of their…

A necessary prerequisite to the operational use of item response theory (IRT) in any testing program is the investigation of the feasibility of such an approach. This report presents the results of such research for the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT). Despite the fact that GMAT data appear to violate a basic assumption of the…

A questionnaire concerning the use of teacher made tests was completed by 123 public school teachers in Ohio. Five testing practices were examined: (1) number of teacher made tests given during a course or school year; (2) types of test items most commonly used; (3) sources used in obtaining test items; (4) information used in assigning grades;…

Recent research findings on the economic implications of investments in the quality of education are examined in this report. "The Quality of Education and Economic Growth: A Review of Literature" (Lewis C. Solmon) reviews evidence on ways to develop educational policy that would stimulate economic growth in developing countries. "School Quality…

Proceedings of three regional conferences on the quality of American higher education are presented. Sponsored by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, these conferences consisted of round-table discussions concerning recommendations from the national report "Involvement in Learning," as well as strategies needed to…