The history of the development of National Assessment exercises from the project's inception in 1964 to the present is provided in this monograph. The chapter titles are as follows: I. Introduction; II. Rationale and Criteria for Writing Exercises for National Assessment; III. Initial Reviews; IV. Initial Studies; V. Subject Matter Reviews; VI.…

A PLANNING CONFERENCE WAS HELD TO STUDY THE QUESTION OF EXPERIMENTAL DEVELOPMENT OF STANDARDIZED FOREIGN LANGUAGE READING PROFICIENCY TESTS FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS. THE CONSENSUS OF THE CONFERENCE WAS THAT STANDARDIZED TESTS WERE NEEDED AND THAT THERE BE TWO FOLLOWUP PHASES TO THE PLANNING CONFERENCE. PHASE 1 WOULD CONSIDER THE DEVELOPMENT OF THESE…

Form 5 of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) was administered to over 35,000 male and female students in grade nine through twelve. The sample was selected to be representative of the students in the national high school population. Normative percentile tables were developed for each subtest and composite for each grade and…

"Options in Education" is a radio news program which focuses on issues and developments in education. This transcript of the first show contains discussions of college enrollment, the controversy over standardized testing, hyperactivity in school children, the rash of teacher strikes, and how to become a professional golfer. Participants…

A set of guidelines for evaluating criterion-referenced tests is presented. Additionally, 11 sets of extant criterion-referenced tests are evaluated using these guidelines. (JKS)

The Canadian Institute for Research in Behavioral and Social Sciences of Calgary was awarded a contract by the Provincial Government of Alberta to assess student skills and knowledge in reading and written composition. Here evaluation is defined and the use of standardized and criterion referenced tests for evaluating reading performance are…

The 1972 re-norming of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale for children from three to six years of age produced unusually high scores. When these children were retested three years later, some drop in scores was noted. Reasons for the initial scores and the score decline are discussed. (Author/JKS)

Although word recognition tests continue to be widely employed by teachers, the application of out-of-date norms and varying methods of administration and scoring seriously reduce the usefulness of these tests. As a result, a restandardization of the Burt-Vernon and Schonell tests was undertaken to produce reliable norms and to standardize…

This research examines the effects of test format on achievement-test performances of Black children. Multiple-choice test items containing distractors (e.g., all correct, all incorrect) penalize Black children, since distractors appear to serve as blocking agents. The results also suggest that distractors encourage guessing. (Author/DOW)

Assesses the academic merit of an innovative undergraduate program designed to teach students the importance of critical thinking skills and social science concepts. As a result of these tests, students did improve their knowledge of some critical thinking skills relative to control. (Author)

Although American schools are not as good as they might be, most indicators suggest that they are better now than in the past, that they are better than schools in other nations, and that they are generally successful in meeting the commonly accepted goals of education. (JG)

Trained raters analyzed the educational and psychometric quality of standardized mathematics tests for high school students in the United States. Results showed many tests to be weak in common types of validity and reliability. General mathematics tests had, as a rule, higher ratings than applied mathematics, algebra, or geometry tests. (Author/MN)

Issues such as the utility of standardized assessment instruments in the assessment of severely handicapped infants and preschool children are considered. A model is proposed for analyzing underlying cognitive requirements of assessment tasks and for using results of such an analysis for program planning. (Author/DB)

Contends that state-by-state comparisons of National Assessment of Educational Progress test scores will lead to simplistic conclusions and an increase in teaching-to-the-test curriculums. (MLF)