Assessment techniques for young severely retarded children are analyzed through identification of skills underlying such common tasks as building with blocks, completing puzzles, and putting pegs in pegboards. Examples are given of four mathematics assessment tasks from a standardized instrument for reasoning and problem solving. Described are the…

Annotations of twenty English placement tests are presented, providing for each a general description, information on content, publication of results, diagnostic capabilities, and predictability. Tests are arranged in three categories: (1) standardized English placement tests, including The College English Placement Test, Comparative Guidance and…

This study was part of the evaluation of Project INSTRUCT, a Title III ESEA reading project. Project schools rated high on implementation were paired with similar control schools. Samples of 165 second-grade students were randomly selected from project and control schools. Covariance procedures were used to compare word knowledge, reading, and…

This pamphlet outlines an attempt to provide an instrument by which the linguistic background of Welsh children can be measured. In a group of Welsh-speaking children there are different degrees of Welshness, and it is essential, for educational purposes, that the degrees of Welsh linguistic background be estimated. The two versions of the Welsh…

The purpose of the present study is to examine the April, 1974 Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) for item-content bias between the sexes. By so doing, this study forms a logical extention of the work of Coffman (1961) on the '54 SAT, and Donlon (1973) on the '64 SAT. A study of item-sex bias was conducted using the method of delta-plots (Angoff,…

The accountability movement in American education has received great clamors of attention in the past few years. This movement, in turn, suggests the need for particular data to inform responsible decision-making; the need for assessment instruments which can address the question of what is learned; and the need for strengthening the existing…

The problems and issues involved in the conduct of educational-developmental research are examined within the perspective of longitudinal research methodology. Chapters 2 and 3 examine contemporary research designs and procedures implemented for the selection of subjects and testing of behavior over time. Particular attention is given to the…

Under the California Assembly Bill 665 of 1972, the state assessment program must test all students in grades 1, 2, 3, 6, and 12 in reading skills, and those in grades 6 and 12 to assess their skills in effectiveness of written expression, spelling, and mathematics. The state may develop its own tests, and a matrix sampling approach may be used…

Project TALENT, a large scale, long range, longitudinal study, is designed primarily to provide insights into the characteristics and development of American adolescents. In order to compare trends in test results, a comprehensive battery of Psychological, educational, and personality measures were administered to participants in the 1960, 1970,…

The need for improved measures is particularly acute in reading because, in spite of the magnitude of time and effort which continues to be invested in reading, there is no insurance that the outcome is indeed proportionate to the effort involved. How much of the educational system's performance relative to its own goals is measured by a…

Middle and upper class 3- and 4-year-old children were exposed to three consecutive 5-week treatment conditions in the naturalistic setting of a half-day laboratory nursery school program. During the first treatment condition, the teacher emphasized low level cognitive questions; during the second, high level cognitive questions; and during the…

Data was collected from school systems in order to examine their policy regarding the release of standardized achievement test scores to the public. Results indicated that larger schools were more likely than small schools to release scores. For those schools releasing scores, a breakdown was provided for the methods and statistical measures used.…

The purpose of this study was to answer the basic question: What is the gap between published articles on black admissions and actual practices in the schools? Eighty-seven (90 percent sample) large, primarily white institutions returned questionnaires concerning their admissions policies for black students. Results indicated that very few blacks…

The present study was developed in order to help clarify some issues concerning the "at home" or "early entry" effect upon the child's development. The special problems that this study identified as valuable in the child's development were reading readiness and emotional "well-being". Five groups of young children matched for age, socioeconmoc…

The Anchor Test Study provides a method for translating a pupil's score on any one of eight widely used standardized reading tests for Grades 4, 5, and 6 to a corresponding score of any of the other seven tests, as well as furnishing new nationally representative norms for each of the eight tests. In addition, the Study presents new estimates of…