A study was conducted to design a system of testing and interviewing which would bring into some relationship the personal characteristics of teacher education students and the external or setting demands made on public school teachers. The major purpose was to provide an opportunity for each student to examine his behavior in a safe and…

This outline for research constitutes the report and recommendations of a conference conducted by the Center for Applied Linguistics under contract with the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Two Conference papers are included. The first, By Countney B. Cazden and Vera P. John, "Learning in American Indian…

An experimental design was employed to assess the impact of standardized tests on 47 second grade Irish teachers' judgments of their 1,566 students. Teachers receiving test results showed greater shifts in their ratings of students than teachers not receiving test results. However, these shifts tended to be in the positive direction and for only a…

Current research and treatment methods view test anxiety as the student's problem. The author challenges the prevailing view and describes test anxiety not only as the student's psychological problem, but also as one result of the university's struggle to maintain power over the students. Consulting with faculty, acting as student advocates, and…

The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of an individualized program for learning-disabled children. The subjects participated individually prescribed learning activities, which involved small-group interactions directed toward the growth and development of perceptual skills, perceptual-motor skills and self-concepts, and…

At a reading conference devoted to analysis of the impact of statewide testing of reading in New Jersey, the following nine questions were addressed: How can scores be used by teachers? How should test results be reported to the press and the public? Do state tests replace commercial, normed tests? Is the state test unfair to minorities? How might…

Presented are abstracts and general information on 28 instruments useful for educational assessment of severely developmentally impaired students. An introductory section provides brief discussions on the limitations of the instruments, general rules for administering standardized tests, norm referenced tests, criterion referenced tests,…

An experiment was carried out to investigate errors in translation exercises done by French students studying English as a second language. A code was devised to rate errors as being: (1) lexical or grammatical, and (2) related to the signifier or the signified, with further subdivisions within these groups. While this method has the advantage…

This report describes the general plan for a study to clarify the interpretation of group performance measures of student achievement. Group tests are the most efficient procedure for collecting achievement information from a large number of students, but they also require item formats that may be different from the form in which students normally…

In this keynote address, the author introduces several topics of concern for participants in a workshop on competency-based adult education (CBAE). First, he defines four basic terms: adult performance level, minimum competency testing, comptency-based education, and competency-based adult education. Then he reviews the historical background of…

The organization of nine selected cognitive abilities from Guilford's structure-of-intellect model (SI) was explored in a sample of Spanish-English bilingual students. One hundred and ninety-four seventh and eighth graders were assigned to take a battery of nine cognitive ability tests in Spanish or English. The nine tests measured convergent…

Test items, all referencing the same instructional objective, are not equally difficult. This investigation attempts to identify some of the determinants of item difficulty within the context of a first course in educational statistics. Computer generated variations of items were used to provide the data. The results were used to investigate the…

Summarizing a two-part general report on a reading assessment of grades 8 and 12 in the province of British Columbia, this report provides the general background on the aims and methods of the assessment, presents information on the development of the test instrument, details the administration of the test, and reports its results. In addition,…

A comparison of test results on the Visual Discrimination Test was made between a group of 22 reading disabled children and 22 children who were reading on or above grade level. Both groups were of average or above-average intelligence and the two groups were matched for age and sex. The mean age was 10 years and 3 months and all the reading…

This document begins with an outline of events seen as noteworthy in the search for fairness in general and includes a brief discussion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, and the Tower Amendment (Title VII). These events are placed in perspective with recent events which have impacted the notion of…