The first part of this volume is concerned with theoretical and conceptual issues concerning learning potential assessment. The second part deals with methodological and measurement issues in learning potential assessment, and the third part is devoted to research projects and practical applications of learning potential tests. The following…

The New Zealand National Qualifications Framework (NQF) is a new qualifications, credit, and assessment system. This report explores the difference the NQF makes for young people. It is the first report of a longitudinal study that will follow two cohorts of students in seven North Island (New Zealand) high schools to see the impact the NQF has on…

Compulsory national testing for children at ages 7, 11, 14, and 16 years is part of the British National Curriculum. This development contributes to the fact that the issue of assessment is of increasing interest to parents, teachers, administrators, and employers. This book attempts to explain how assessment systems work and the uses that can be…

The chapters in this collection deal with a range of issues that surround the positive and negative aspects of assessment and distinguish assessment and evaluation. Educational organizations have become more and more dominated by the processes of assessment and evaluation in various guises such as teacher appraisal, accountability, and student…

Guidance is offered in Spanish on the creation and use of alternative assessment, and a process model is presented that links assessment with curriculum and instruction, based on contemporary theories of learning and cognition. The introductory chapter provides background on the purposes of assessment and the need for new alternatives, with an…

Adapting credentialing examinations for international uses involves translating tests for use in multiple languages. This paper explores methods for evaluating construct equivalence and item equivalence across different language versions of a test. These methods were applied to four different language versions (English, French, German, and…

The thesis of this paper is that achievement tests have changed their primary function from serving as indicators of educational accomplishments to becoming instruments of educational policy, and have thus come to be regarded as effective means of altering educational achievement and productivity. This assertion is explored by using examples of…

A report on the Language Assessment Battery (LAB) explains, in question-and-answer form, the causes and results of some changes made in the test norms. The LAB is a test of communicative language competence, written in English and Spanish versions and used for student placement in the New York City Public Schools. The report describes the test…

A study was conducted at Messiah College, a religiously affiliated liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, to identify classes that had excellent evaluation procedures. Standardized student ratings of classroom testing were drawn from the Instructional Development and Effectiveness Assessment (IDEA), which includes an item on "preparing…

The present study, which was drawn from a larger project in which teachers developed and implemented performance assessments in their classrooms, investigates children's perceptions of what reading and mathematics are and how they understand their teachers' knowledge of them as readers and mathematicians. Two students from each of 13 third-grade…

A study was conducted to examine and compare, in 10 selected countries, the interaction between current conceptions and theories of assessment and assessment practices. Of particular interest was the nature of changing practice and theory in assessing the learning achievements of students in elementary and secondary education, as well as the…

The dominant issues in considering the use of tests developed outside the classroom to measure the impact of curriculum reform on higher order thinking are reviewed by a panel interviewed for this discussion. Panel members are: (1) Stuart Kahl, (2) Robert Linn, (3) Senta A. Raizen, (4) Lauren Resnick, and (5) Thomas A. Romberg. It is conceded…

The International Personnel Management Association Assessment Council (IPMAAC) focuses on improving public personnel assessment in such fields as selection and performance evaluation. Author-generated summaries/outlines of papers presented at the IPMAAC's 1983 conference are provided. The presidential address is "Is There a Future for Test…

Schools that are concerned with evaluating their programs need more than just the average scaled assessment scores from standardized tests. To help schools, the Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program produces school and district reports that contain the stories behind the averages. These reports describe the kind of students who took the…

Credentialing agencies that use multi-test examinations (MTEs) should be concerned with the quality of pass/fail outcomes as well as with the proportion of candidates passing. This study addressed three questions: (1) the effects on passing rate of MTE reliability, number of tests comprising a MTE, and correlations between pairs of component…