This toolkit is a compilation of ideas, examples, suggestions, activities, tools, strategies, and templates for producing school portfolios that will result in continuous school improvement. The chapters are: (1) Introduction; (2) Continuous School Improvement; (3) The School Portfolio; (4) Information and Analysis; (5) Student Achievement; (6)…

Item writing is a major responsibility of trainers. Too often, qualified staff who prepare lessons carefully and teach conscientiously use inadequate tests that do not validly reflect the true level of trainee achievement. This monograph describes techniques for constructing multiple-choice items that measure student performance accurately. It…

This study describes the development and validation of an instrument to tap employee reflections on career interests, needs and career development opportunities. Item construction was based on issues identified in previous qualitative research and themes prevalent in recent HRD career development literature. Pilot data for an exploratory factor…

Academic delay of gratification refers to students' willingness to postpone immediately available opportunities to satisfy impulses in favor of academic goals that are temporally remote but ostensibly more valuable. The purpose of the present investigation was to develop and validate the Academic Delay of Gratification Scale (ADOGS) as a new…

A multiple-phase study was conducted to develop a reliable and valid instrument to examine teachers' attitudes toward teaching physical activity and fitness. Thirty-one subjects participated in the preliminary study involving the development of an attitude instrument. Subjects for the content validity study were 28 experts in physical education…

The purpose of this paper is to formulate optimal sequential rules for mastery tests. The framework for this approach is derived from empirical Bayesian decision theory. Both a threshold and linear loss structure are considered. The binomial probability distribution is adopted as the psychometric model involved. Conditions sufficient for…

This document is a supplement to the Test Content Description for the Georgia High School Test in Science. The sample items are representative of items on the actual Georgia High School Tests. The strands (major areas) being tested are: (1) World Studies (18% to 20% of the test); (2) United States History since 1865 (18% to 20% of the test); (3)…

A sample of 1,239 students in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades of 3 public schools used a "yes" or "no" format to respond to a 12-item Work Ethic Scale (WES) designed to measure students' intrinsic and extrinsic valuing of work. Analysis shows that: (1) the WES was minimally related to a measure of social desirability; (2) item-remainder…

This brief makes the case for thoughtful district- or school-driven assessment systems that complement and go beyond what statewide testing systems are able to accomplish. It describes important attributes of model local assessment programs and presents the necessary steps for building a local assessment program that will elicit information that…

Under a Congressional mandate, the General Accounting Office (GAO) studied the costs of implementing tests that will be required under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA) and the reauthorization of the Title I program. In passing the legislation, Congress increased the frequency with which states are to measure student achievement in mathematics…

This study was undertaken to clarify the internal structure of the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) and shed light on the ability or abilities measured by the three item types that make up the test (logical reasoning, analytical reasoning, and reading comprehension). The study used data for two forms of the LSAT for general samples of LSAT…

This year marks the seventh edition of the "Summary of State Student Assessment Programs" (SSAP) and the third year that the Council of Chief State School Officers has conducted the survey on which the summary is based on its own. The survey summarizes what is happening in statewide assessment programs and provides information on trends…

This study examined matrix sampling of test content, the practice of giving various students in the same school differing test questions. This often-used approach to large-scale assessment allows for relatively broad coverage of the curriculum, but with fewer comparable individual student scores than a conventional test. One can be sure that…

Performance assessments can provide an effective means of measuring abilities that are difficult or impossible to measure with a multiple-choice test, such as ability to communicate, solve problems, and employ critical thinking skills. Performance assessments consist of a task and a set of scoring guidelines, or a rubric. Both performance tasks…

As education policymakers have moved to reform K-12 public education, the roles of test publishers in assessment have expanded. In the last two decades these expanded roles have coincided with the movement of assessment to the center of education reform initiatives. The drive for improvement in public education has made the roles of test…