This publication is a revision and restructuring of "Reducing School Violence," published in 1993. This revised edition benefits from the assistance of many of the original reviewers, as well as additional experts and practitioners. The key to school safety is a comprehensive approach. This guidebook was designed to help teachers, school…

Much information is available to help users locate and evaluate career assessment instruments. This digest can help improve their evaluations. For the purpose of both locating and evaluating career assessment instruments there are three primary sources. Best known among these are the Buros Institute's publication "Tests in Print" and its…

One method used by Alabama's Snead State Community College (SSCC) to measure student learning is to compare student scores on placement exams, taken before core course work, to results from evaluation exams, taken upon completion of core courses. All incoming freshmen are required to provide scores from American College Testing (ACT) assessment…

The construction, administration, and scoring of the Teachers Oral Proficiency Interview for South Africa (TOPISA) are described, and issues in its use are discussed. The test was developed to help standardize English proficiency levels of teachers in the post-apartheid, multicultural society. The rationale for a standardized test in this context…

Establishing and refining a framework for performance assessment is especially difficult in large-scale settings that can involve hundreds of judges and thousands of students. This presentation advocates the interactive use of two complementary analytic perspectives and illustrates the approach in the context of the College Entrance Examination…

The Improving America's Schools Act of 1994 substantially revised the Title I program for disadvantaged children. Some of the most far-reaching changes relate to testing and accountability. States will now need to develop their own assessments and ensure that these assessments are aligned with challenging state standards linked to educational…

High-stakes assessments are those in which the results of tests or other measures can lead to decisions that may affect school administrators, teachers, and students substantially. Whether high-stakes assessment results in misleading information due to extraneous factors associated with the conditions under which the assessment occurs is explored.…

Alternative teaching strategies such as cooperative group work should be followed by cooperative assessment strategies. Teachers of teachers use various teaching models but may fail to also model a similar variety of assessment strategies. When the emphasis is on cooperative learning, especially with an issues-oriented approach, then the…

The final work of the National Skill Standards Development Project (NSSDP) is to create a model for developing and administering a certification program for electronics technicians based on already developed skill standards. During its first 2 years, NSSDP has developed over 300 standards for work-ready, entry-level electronics technicians;…

A practice test has been prepared to give students experience with test items that are similar to those on the Ohio Ninth-grade Proficiency Tests. The practice test consists of one writing prompt, 20 reading questions, 20 mathematics questions, 25 citizenship questions, and 20 science questions. This manual contains instructions to the teacher, as…

The Cognitive Science Laboratory of the University of Southern California has conducted a series of studies on the experimental effects of motivation on a low-stakes (to the student) standardized test. This report summarizes these studies and their results. The test in question is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). A series of…

This packet consists of explanatory materials on the Missouri Marketing Education Competency Profile and related information. Section 1 describes the mission of marketing education, marketing occupations, curriculum framework, and curriculum alignment for the 1996 profile. Section 2 addresses 1996 revisions to the Missouri Marketing Education Core…

In 1991 Arizona embarked on a program to change schools and make them more accountable for educational achievement. The instrument of reform was an assessment program known as the Arizona Student Assessment Program (ASAP), the most notable feature of which was a performance assessment that was added to an already extensive battery of…

The evolution of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) and certification process is traced. The challenges posed by combining, for certification purposes, the scores from internal and external assessments of school candidates are discussed in the face of the low reliability of teachers'…

The Individualized Quality of Life Scale (IQOLS) is a two-component scale designed to measure the quality of life (QOL) of cancer patients. The two components are the patient's satisfaction with 14 different life areas and the importance of the life areas to the individual. By combining the two components, an overall QOL score can be obtained that…