Summarizes the focus of this Tribal College issue, which addresses the need for specialized education to meet American Indian students' individual needs. States that standardized tests are not effective measures and that special education evaluation and referrals are not a neutral, objective process. Asserts that the answers lie in individual…

Describes alternatives to the standard special education approach of assessment, referral, and placement. Provides three guiding principles that personalize the assessment process. Proposes solutions: meeting with parents to plan for student success, assembling a team of professionals to review and solve problems, and establishing formal…

Provides information on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in music. Discusses the "red flags," such as test sampling, from the "Arts Report Card" that signal doubt as to the usefulness of its data. Considers the lessons learned from the "Arts Report Card." (CMK)

Examines the methods used by foreign-language teachers to evaluate their undergraduate students. Indicates that cohesive language curricula include language and culture skills and integrate in- and out-of-class experiences. Suggests that assessment should be consistent with classroom procedures; measure growth, breadth, and the use of authentic…

Discusses ways in which the logic of mandated systems of mass testing, as a means of ensuring the accountability of public schools, results in the loss of local responsibility for student learning, as well as an inevitable orientation of local schools to comply with system directives over personal, professional, and community values. (Contains 55…

This article discusses the use of performance task assessments by Project STAR for identifying students for academically gifted programs in grades 3-6. A field test of the performance assessment tasks resulted in finding an additional group of students who were 12 percent African American and 14 percent low-income children. (Contains references.)…

Few analyses have examined what testing's political status means for how those outside the education establishment view externally mandated tests and what they expect them to accomplish. This article provides such an analysis by first elaborating on the notion that testing and accountability have become political issues. It then describes the…

Just weeks before states release their lists of schools that have not met "adequate yearly progress" targets under the main federal K-12 law, many states are still negotiating with federal officials over changes to their accountability plans designed to reduce those numbers. The federal No Child Left Behind Act, a 2 1/2-year-old revision…

Out amid the weed-choked factory lots and the bare yards of housing projects in Birmingham, Alabama, Steve Orel has become a kind of hero. The 50-year-old Orel runs the World of Opportunity School out of an old industrial building. Affectionately known as WOO, the school is a private, shoestring operation that offers students who have fallen…

Computer adaptive testing is the study of scoring tests and questions based on assumptions concerning the mathematical relationship between examinees' ability and the examinees' responses. Adaptive student tests, which are based on item response theory (IRT), have many advantages over conventional tests. We use the least square method, a…

Defining equity within the context of a diverse, multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, and multicultural society, and one where social class strongly influences one's life chances is problematic. This chapter reexamines equity in an attempt to advance the discourse beyond the debate about strategies to close the achievement gap between White…

Value-added models in education research allow researchers to explore how a wide variety of policies and measured school inputs affect the academic performance of students. Researchers typically quantify the impacts of such interventions in terms of "effect sizes", i.e., the estimated effect of a one standard deviation change in the…

This material provides an initial assessment procedure to help identify the level of basic skills competence of people entering education or training. It is based on Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Unit Standards that describe how and to what level of performance adults should be able to use communication and number skills. The material can be…

The Tell-Me-A-Story (TEMAS) Culturally Sensitive Test was administered to 74 Puerto Rican students in a New York City school in order to measure such personality resources as conflict resolution skills and cognitive structuring of narratives. The resulting data was used to examine the degree to which these early adolescents' personality resources…

When an examination consists in whole or part of constructed response test items, it is common practice to allow the examinee to choose a subset of the constructed response questions from a larger pool. It is sometimes argued that, if choice were not allowed, the limitations on domain coverage forced by the small number of items might unfairly…