The association between Lewis M. Terman and the World Book Company is traced in order to gain insight about the role of test publishing in the testing movement. The test publisher assumes the position of an intermediary between the test developer and the educational administrator responsible for making decisions about test adoption. Terman began…

This catalogue discusses major Minnesota proposals over the past two years (through the end of the 1985 legislative session) for improving the quality of K-12 public education in the state. Following a 10-page summary is a legislative update which provides a picture of education reform as enacted by the state legislation, and connects some of the…

A model exit examination for a community college English composition course is presented, along with a discussion of the evaluation criteria used and the content areas assessed by the examination. First, methods of objectively evaluating written examinations are discussed, and analytical scoring methods are contrasted with the holistic scoring…

This document provides a discussion of the scrutiny for bias and unfairness that standardized tests have come under by persons involved in the construction, administration, use, and interpretation of test results. After this discussion six simulation exercises are provided. In these exercises a situation is described involving the use of test…

An urban school district affected by testing in the effective schools context is described in order to provide examples of the effects of testing on teaching and the curriculum. The report describes the method of operationalizing the effective schools research using test information. An important catalyst to improving the instructional program was…

This paper discusses systemic problems with testing and outlines two scenarios for reformulating testing based on intelligent tutoring systems. Five desiderata are provided to underpin the type of testing proposed: (1) tests should emphasize learning and thinking; (2) tests should require generation as well as selection; (3) tests should be…

Designed primarily for English faculty at two-year colleges in California, "Inside English" includes articles on major instructional, curricular, administrative, and employment issues of concern to teachers in the field as well as information on the activities of the English Council of the California Two-Year Colleges (ECCTYC). The fall 1974 and…

In 1983-84, the Center for the Study of Community Colleges developed and field tested an instrument, the General Academic Assessment (GAA), to assess community college students' knowledge of several liberal arts areas, including mathematics. The GAA was completed by a sample of 8,024 students at four large, urban community college districts. The…

The purpose of this bulletin is to provide information to teachers and students about the 1988 Social Studies 30 Diploma Examination. The bulletin includes: (1) a description of the examination; (2) an outline of the objectives to be tested; (3) charts illustrating both the multiple-choice and written-response sections of the examination; (4) the…

The answer-until-correct procedure has made comparatively little impact on the field of educational testing due to the absence of a sound theoretical base for turning the response data into measures. Three new latent trait models are described. They differ in their complexity, though each is designed to yield a single parameter to measure student…

This document contains three papers from the Methodology Project of the Center for the Study of Evaluation. Methods for characterizing test accuracy are reported in the first two papers. "Bounds on the K Out of N Reliability of a Test, and an Exact Test for Hierarchically Related Items" describes and illustrates how an extension of a…

Educators are called upon to improve the quality of classroom tests to enhance the learning of content. Less faculty concern for tests than for other features of instruction, compounded by a lack of knowing how to assess different levels of learning with test questions that measure complex processes, appear to generate poor quality classroom…

The purpose of this paper is to trace the development of the idea of measurement of pupil growth and achievement as a criterion of teacher effectiveness through the scholarly writings of A. S. Barr (1892-1962). The search for the criterion of teacher efficiency, and later effectiveness, was the professional concern that guided Barr's research for…

The effects of two methods of testing students on student grades were studied in 1982 with two economics classes that were taught by the same instructor. One class, which involved four 1-hour lectures weekly, received the normal four block-form examinations. The 34 students in this class were the control group. The 36 students in the other class…

Examines six areas of controversy surrounding testing--test validity, the role of affective objectives, criterion-referenced tests, test bias, IQ tests, and the effect of competition. (IRT)