The United Kingdom has a history of performance assessment even for accountability purposes, as the public examinations (standardized achievement tests) at age 16 demonstrate. What the country does not have is a strong history in the area of equity. Debate and policy-making, when concerned at all, have been concentrated on equality of opportunity,…

Many professionals are convinced that more testing, tracking, and retention are taking place in the early school years than ever before. They also believe that developmentally inappropriate modifications to curricula are being implemented. As a result of inappropriate use of standardized tests, disproportionate numbers of poor and minority…

A guide to the adaptation of oral proficiency testing for classroom language instruction contains excerpts of projects by participants in an American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) workshop. The excerpts are examples of proficiency based curricula and materials designed to personalize instruction and simulate real-life…

The purpose of this paper, which is drawn from a larger analytic history of the National Teacher Evaluation (NTE) program, is to investigate issues of validity within the context of the program's 50-year history. Three major findings emerge from historical considerations relating to: (1) the continuity of test content and justification over the…

The Halstead/Bentley Public School District in south-central Kansas has a long, successful history of administering a comprehensive evaluation program of achievement, scholastic aptitude, and interest tests and inventories in grades K-12. The PSAT/NMSQT (Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test) is an…

In 1983 the Maryland State Department of Public Education (MSDE) issued a request for proposals for "The Development of the Score Reporting System for the Maryland Functional Testing Program." The MSDE called for a literature review, a national survey, a statewide survey of user needs and capabilities, an assessment of the state's report…

This handbook is a guide to the "Test Development Notebook" of the System for Pupil and Program Evaluation and Development (SPPED). It describes the contents and organization of the notebook, suggests various uses of the exercises, provides sample test designs, outlines test production procedures, and offers guidelines for score…

A cut score validity analysis for a pretest writing prompt and the SAT Verbal and Math assessments was performed for academic writing course placement. This study was carried out as part of a broader program of assessment aimed at understanding the impact of the writing course and eventually set the baseline for assessing the impact of 'writing…

For comparison with tests and curriculum in the United States, excerpts from mathematics sections of university entrance examinations in Japan are presented. The impact of tests tightly tied to curriculum is discussed, and test results are summarized. Sample student responses to the examinations are also reviewed. (SLD)

A persistent problem in U.S. educational research has been how to explain the continuing low performance on standardized tests by certain racial and ethnic minority-group students, such as Chicanos. This chapter identifies abusive practices stemming from standardized testing that help to shape school failure among Chicano students, and discusses…

While the publication of school report cards and profiles is common in a number of states, their contents and formats vary as they represent the concerns and initiatives of policymakers. Over recent years, several studies have been made of school report cards and profiles. In this investigation, the focus is a comparison of report cards and…

This exploration of educational improvement through student assessment focuses on the Schoolyear 2000 (SY2000) program developed by the Center for Educational Technology at Florida State University in conjunction with the Florida Department of Education Planning Resources Committee. SY2000 consists of 10 functional subsystems that will operate in…

Examining testing practices in other countries can help formulate ideas and issues in establishing a national assessment system in the United States. Based on recent reports by the Office of Technology and Assessment and the National Endowment for the Humanities, this digest provides an overview of the national examinations in several European…

The Korean Society for Educational Evaluation is described, and the national college entrance examination used in Korea is discussed. The Korean Society for Educational Evaluation exists to promote exchange of academic information among members on measurement, statistics, research methodologies, and evaluation. The Society publishes a journal and…

This study demonstrates that the validity and usefulness of mathematics achievement tests can be improved by defining psychologically meaningful subscores that yield differential relations with student, teacher, and school variables. The National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) 8th- and 10th-grade math tests were subjected to full…