The North Carolina Project for Reform in Science Education, which is part of the National Science Teachers Association's Scope, Sequence, and Coordination Project, and the importance of student test scores as an evaluation tool were evaluated. Seven North Carolina schools participated in the project's first year (1991-92), with 21 teachers, and…

The creation and validation of a Spanish version of an English developmental spelling test (DST) is described. An introductory section reviews related literature on the rationale for and construction of DSTs, spelling development in the early grades, and Spanish-English bilingual education. Differences between the English and Spanish test versions…

The National Academy of Education Panel is providing the intellectual leadership and coordination for an independent evaluation of the 1990 and 1992 Trial State Assessments (TSA) of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). These instruments provide state-by-state comparisons of educational achievement, which is the first such use of…

The purpose of this study was to provide teachers, supervisors, and school administrators with a valid scale for measuring teacher attitudes toward low achievers in mathematics: the Teacher Attitudes Toward Low Achievement in Mathematics Scale (TALAM). The development of the instrument was carried out in three phases. Phase 1 consisted of…

In this final report of an 18-month series of projects designed to investigate the validity of the General Knowledge (GK) and Communications Skills (CS) tests of the National Teacher Examinations (NTE) for North Carolina, highlights and major conclusions are summarized and appropriate standards of performance are recommended. Evidence was…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 19 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effectiveness of English placement examinations used at five junior colleges in California; (2) the direction and distance of context required by college…

This project first identified the duties and tasks required of an entry-level auto mechanic (AM) and an auto body worker (ABW), using a modified DACUM (Developing a Curriculum) occupational analysis process. In this process, a panel of local, expert workers determined the essential duties and tasks of their occupations. Next, the panel identified…

The licensure of public school personnel in Tennessee is a function of the State Department of Education (SDE). Additional requirements for this certification function were added by the Comprehensive Education Reform Act (Senate Bill Number 1) of the 1984 Tennessee General Assembly. The Act mandated that the SDE use tests to assess the competence…

The Verbal Peer Adult Emotional Scale (VPAE), a behavioral rating scale for measuring the progress of severely maladaptive children, covers four areas: verbal behavior, peer interaction, interaction with adults, and emotional behavior. The 16-item scale is designed for use with children between the chronological ages of two and nine years, who are…

Because foreign language placement at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is based solely on College Entrance Examination Board Foreign Language Placement Test scores, first semester courses are composed of students with heterogeneous foreign language backgrounds. French 101 was chosen to study the relationship between two entering…

This third document in a three-volume summative evaluation report submitted to the National Institute of Education presents a portion of the internal evaluation conducted by the Mountain-Plains program, a residential, family-based education program developed to improve the economic potential and lifestyle of selected student families in a…

Focusing on school failure among lower-class and minority children, the paper reexamines the relationship between "cognitive style" and school performance, and questions whether lower-class school failure really concerns cognitive performance at all. "Cognitive style" is defined as information processing habits which represent the learners'…

Major analyses of the achievement tests used in the Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study were conducted to determine test reactivity to instruction. Reading and mathematics tests were administered to second and fifth grade children. Classroom teachers' records were examined to determine the amount of opportunity students had to learn the content…

The Fundamental Achievement Series (FAS) is designed to cover a range of ability from basic literacy to approximately the eighth grade. These tests are used in the employment or educational placement of adults and adolescents who have not been exposed to formal education, or the educationally disadvantaged. The FAS contains a Verbal and a…

The criterion-oriented problem of test bias and fairness in selection is compared to the construct-oriented problem of comparability of test scores in cross-cultural research. These problems are shown to have important similarities, and their studies may supplement each other. In a formulation of psychometric criteria for the comparability of test…