Shares a teacher's stages of selecting and revising a performance-assessment task focusing on data handling. Discusses selection and revision criteria, examining student work, reflecting on the task, and revising the final task. (MKR)

One assessment method used in early childhood classrooms is videotapes of each child. Videos can be viewed by teachers, parents, specialists, and others to track individual growth and development and plan tailored strategies. (SK)

Discusses how a teacher "assesses" students through "gift-poems" written with little or no revision in the midst of the end-of-year frenzy. Notes that sometimes "invisible" children suddenly became visible to the teacher after writing these poems. Includes eight such poems. (RS)

Offers guidance in conducting observational assessment, including what to look for, how to look for it, how to document it, and how to use it. Also offers hints from teachers who have experimented with observational assessment. (MKR)

Presents an alternative way for testing a student's understanding of theory in a tertiary mathematics course. Provides two sample questions and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the method. Argues that the method is an acceptable and flexible means of testing students and can be adapted to use in other contexts as well. (Author/ASK)

Discusses ways to make faculty portfolio programs more effective. (MKR)

Discusses teachers' perspectives of alternative assessment, including loss of predictability in the classroom, content coverage, familiarizing students with the teacher's expectations, dealing with increased demands on time, and communicating with parents. (AIM)

Discusses the fact that alternative approaches to assessment are not more evident in critical pedagogies. Reviews propositions for the revision of assessment from the perspectives of student-centered and critical pedagogy and proposes that it is necessary to understand and work with complex social processes in developing less hierarchical…

An interpretative study examines three teachers' struggles with the issue of fairness in relation to their classroom actions. Concludes that owing to different senses of fairness among the teachers, assessment innovation is a necessary but not sufficient mechanism for change in an educational system. (Author/MM)

The 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act required states to provide access to the general curriculum and alternate assessments for students with disabilities who were unable to participate in statewide assessments. For this study, we examined the curricular focus of alternate assessments using performance indicators…

State assessment systems continue to evolve as federal requirements change and more students are included in the assessment systems. An examination of states' participation and accommodations policies in place at the beginning of the accountability requirements set by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 revealed that policies for both…

Math teachers from across the country, already facing enormous pressure to raise scores on high-stakes tests, should embrace other, more creative forms of assessment as a way to improve instruction, peers urge. Assessment, far from being a dirty-word, was a major theme at the annual conference of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.…

The authors have been using components of team-based learning (TBL) in two undergraduate courses at the University of Texas for several years: an educational psychology survey course--Cognition, Human Learning and Motivation--and Introduction to Statistics. In this chapter, they describe how they used technology in classes of fifty to seventy…

This article describes how The Language Center at the Espirito Santo Federal University changed from using traditional pencil-andpaper tests to performance testing, based on authentic tasks. The change was prompted because people thought that their testing did not reflect a communicative approach to language teaching. The Assessment Project lasted…

In this book, the author describes the complexity of the Self as the source of all human behavior. She will try to outline the structure of the Self, its normal growth and development, and the role of interaction with other living things in this process. Ms. Roeper sees the Self as a unit within us, which includes input from the brain and all…