The original National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has been criticized for its limited ability to provide information that is useful at a variety of levels. As a result, Congress authorized a voluntary NAEP Trial State Assessment Program for the assessment of mathematics at grade 8 in 1990, reading at grade 4 in 1992, and mathematics…

An evaluation of the Early Fives program of the Farmington (Michigan) Public Schools is reported. This extra-year program began in the 1980-81 school year. By the 1982-83 school year, tuition was no longer charged, and a systematic screening effort was implemented. Each Early Fives classroom contains a maximum of 15 children with a certified…

The Defense Activity for Nontraditional Education Support (DANTES) Program is a testing service conducted by the Educational Testing Service for DANTES, an agency of the Department of Defense. DANTES' mission is to help service members obtain credit for knowledge and skills acquired through non-traditional educational experiences. Since World War…

Finnish university language centers are responsible for testing the foreign language proficiency of nearly all university students. It is important that students are assigned equitably to courses, including Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) courses. It is also important in LSP teaching for students' needs and opinions to be taken into account,…

Research bears out the assertion that the traditional tests and measures used to define achievement have incorporated societal attitudes about class, race, and gender. Cultural factors, teacher behaviors, and teacher bias can account for early differences in the reading achievement of girls and boys. Furthermore, girls' grades for English and…

This booklet examines national and state educational reform in the 1990s, noting the ways in which performance assessment is being presented as a mechanism of reform. Three reform initiatives are examined: national education goals, standards, and reform legislation. In conjunction with these reform movements, new methods of assessment are being…

Since 1989 the Texas Education Agency has reported selected results from the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) of the College Board and the American College Testing Program's original and Enhanced ACT Assessment for prior year graduating seniors. This fifth annual report presents these data for the 1991-92 graduating class. Texas statewide and…

This article reports on a study of a new performance-based test mandate in the state of Arizona. The measurement-driven reform provided an opportunity to examine the interplay of policy and practice, specifically the use of testing to effect educational change. Attempts to reform schools through mandating assessments are categorized as behaviorist…

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) and Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) were used to predict achievement (measured by the Stanford Achievement Test) for 200 students with mild handicaps, in grades K through 6 in a rural western school district. Males scored significantly higher than females for every…

Results of the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC) Student Observation Scale (SOS), a measure of classroom behavior, were correlated with results of the BASC Teacher Rating Scale (TRS). Two classroom observations were made of each of 30 students (21 males and 9 females) aged 5 to 11 years. Teachers of those students completed the TRS.…

A study was performed at the College of the Canyons, in Valencia, California, to compare the perceptions of students in basic skills courses with those of their teachers regarding the appropriateness of the recommended course placement in English as a Second Language (ESL), basic English, and basic math. A 10-question student survey and a…

In an attempt to determine the subscale structures most useful for identifying adolescents with social skill deficits, this study investigated the factor structure of the Teenage Inventory of Social Skills (TISS) and its relationship to two measures of adolescent social competence. Two measures were completed by 1,142 ninth-grade students (577…

For many people, school reform means taking the responsibility for goal setting away from teachers and assessing common student accomplishments, but the costs and benefits of this accountability strategy have not been determined. The difference between the aims of education represented by test scores, and those represented by the activities of the…

This report presents results of a systematic analysis of an extensive database on study in the former Soviet Union assembled by the American Council of Teachers of Russian (ACTR) over a period of nearly 20 years. The purpose of the report is to document in detail the data used, the analytical strategy and methods employed, and most importantly the…

This document presents some 20 papers on projects conducted by Foreign Teaching Assistant (FTA) participants in the areas of academic/pedagogical issues, cross-cultural issues, and testing issues. Papers are as follows: "The Testing and Evaluation of Foreign Teaching Assistants: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?" (Ralph Pat Barrett);…