Using informal, objectives-based, or linguistic methods, three elementary school teachers and three experienced item writers developed criterion-referenced pretests-posttests to accompany a prose passage. Item difficulites were tabulated on the responses of 364 elementary students. The informal-subjective method, used by many achievement test…

The Harris Index of Efficiency was used to evaluate the criterion setting (66%) of the Prescriptive Reading Inventory (PRI), a criterion referenced reading test. The subjects, who were involved in a larger experimental study that used the PRI as a criterion measure, were 92 third and fifth grade students. Initial assessment with the Comprehensive…

Sample test questions are given for the Proficiency Testing Program adopted by the Idaho State Department of Education. Except for the writing skills test item, which requires a writing sample, all questions are objective, multiple choice items. Sample questions are given for reading, spelling, and mathematics. (MH)

An instrument to assess elementary school teachers' knowledge of a subskills approach to teaching reading has been developed. In the first phase of the development, an outline of test content was devised and submitted to four reading authorities for evaluation. The second phase involved writing and selecting items for the preliminary test form.…

This report provides a detailed account of a three-year project that sought to determine how average and above average ten- and fifteen-year-old readers in Great Britain actually used reading in school. The 11 chapters cover the following topics: the origins, background, and development of the project; the differences between spoken and written…

The author examines some statistics which indicate entire classrooms of Indian students at the junior high school level are reading at the second or third grade level, and are graduated from high school with perhaps intermediate grade reading ability. Various surveys seem to have established that children are able to achieve at grade level through…

A comparison of the effects of a Language Arts Approach and a Basic Reader Approach when extended from grades 1 and 2 and applied in 22 third-grade classrooms is presented. The Language Arts or Language Experience Approach utilized children's oral language facility and experiences and their creative writing facility in the development of reading…

This paper describes an educational program for 28 adolescent delinquents at a training school for boys. All of the students had histories of educational failure. Individualized programed instruction and a system of extrinsic learning reinforcements were the experimental basis of the program. Points, exchangeable for money, were given to the…

Tests for prereading skills of Israeli kindergarten children were developed and tested on a wide range of socioeconomic levels. Based on studies in the United States and Israel, tests were developed for letter matching, rhyming, sound matching, and letter recognition. Results from 178 kindergarten children led to a division of the letter matching…

This is a report on the evaluation of the Reading Strategy Project operated in 46 public and eight non-public schools during the 1974-75 regular school year. This project served 7,698 pupils. The design of the instructional format of the Reading Strategy Project was one which utilized a criterion-referenced diagnostic reading test, locally…

Ohio's Statewide Needs Assessment is designed to provide baseline data about students' learning in cognitive areas. Over several years, students at various grade levels will be assessed. The areas to be assessed, as well as the grades of the students to be assessed, will be considered and advised upon by the ESEA Title III State Advisory Council.…

Group and individual informal reading inventories have brought about considerable improvement over standardized reading tests in the placement of students at their proper reading levels. Parents and school administrators want more individualization, however, so a comparatively effective, but quicker, test is needed. A combination of "cloze"…

The three purposes for which this study was conducted involved collection and summarization of otherwise unavailable data on student characteristics and aspirations, editing and summarization of reading test data collected over the past six years, and testing of the feasibility and utility of a computerized master file combining student data…

A demonstration project established eight self-supporting, volunteer-staffed adult basic reading tutorial programs in Connecticut, seven in Massachusetts, and one in central New York city. Literacy Volunteers of America (LVA) tutors also helped adult basic education students, tutored inmates and trained inmate tutors in correctional institutions,…

This paper addresses the question, How can the teacher become an instructional manager, turning informal feedback into pupil progress? Particular attention is given to ways teachers may use test data to help them plan lessons for the students. A number of suggestions for improving students' reading skills are also provided. (RB)