To explain the discrepancy between median scores on the 1976 administration of the California Achievement Tests (CAT) and the Sequential Tests of Educational Progress (STEP) in the Austin Independent School District (AISD), ten technical variables typical of achievement tests were considered as explanations. (1) The STEP may measure different…

Public distrust in schools should not be attributed to poorer schools or less able students; it exists because we have a different kind of parent and a different world ahead. Parents of today's children were trained not to accept the status quo, but to question; furthermore, underlying parents' concern about the schools is a fear that their…

The major emphasis of the Kentucky Educational Assessment Program is to determine the actual level of performance of Kentucky pupils in relation to the desired levels of performance established in the 1972 report entitled "Goals of Education in Kentucky." The report was published by the Kentucky State Department of Education and contains…

This guide is designed for school principals who bear the responsibility for the successful administration of Virginia's Competency Program. Several aspects of the program are described: legislative background; graduation requirements concerning citizenship and qualifying for further education or work; tests used to assess reading and mathematics…

The relative validity of adaptive and conventional testing strategies using non-test variables as one set of external criteria was investigated. A total of 101 college students completed both a variable length stradaptive test and peaked conventional test; a second group of 131 college students completed a variable length Bayesian adaptive test…

One of seven sections of a report that examines the assessment of occupational competence, this chapter provides a review of how the courts have responded to assessment practices. The difference in the perspectives held by the users and originators of assessment procedures and those held by the courts is developed by examining key court cases…

This paper discusses the relationship between language proficiency and intelligence. In particular, the paper is concerned with the elements of intelligence testing which creep into tests designed to determine language proficiency, and the proliferation of testing of all types and the kinds of interpretations made of these tests. Particular…

This paper discusses some of the problems involved in the testing of minority group children, focusing on the testing of bilingual minorities and emphasizing the special problems involved in testing Hispanic children. Considered are a variety of ways in which tests have been misused and misinterpreted in working with these children. It is…

A longitudinal study was initiated in the Tuscon Unified School District (TUSD) to follow the achievement of seventh and ninth grade Title I students: (1) to investigate the suitability and difficulty of the Total Reading Test of the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT) and the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (CTBS); (2) to compare the gains in…

This conference focused on two themes: research in testing and the cooperative research program, and testing in the language arts. The morning session was concerned with the impact of the federal Cooperative Research Program on educational research. Papers were entitled: The Support of Measurement Projects by the Cooperative Research Program.…

The concepts of competency can be conceptually separated into two dimensions: minimum competency testing (MCT) and competency based education (CBE). One of the major weaknesses of the MCT movement is the growing reliance on single test scores as indicators of the total capability of students. Minorities do not reject the idea of competence, but…

Twenty multiple-choice vocabulary items and 20 free-response vocabulary items were administered to 660 college students. The free-response items consisted of the stem words of the multiple-choice items. Testees were asked to respond to the free-response items with synonyms. A computer algorithm was developed to transform the numerous…

This booklet contains the 14 exercises that are used in the Bloomington, Minnesota, school system's writing assessment program. Depending on their applicability, the exercises may be used to assess the writing performance of fourth-, eighth-, or eleventh-grade students. Thirteen of the exercises are from the National Assessment of Educational…

This summary of the Bloomington, Minnesota, public schools writing assessment program includes background information about the selection of exercises that assessed fourth-, eighth-, and eleventh-grade students' writing abilities, a list of these exercises that were used, and information about the students who were assessed. The results of the…

The logical and psychological bases for setting cutting scores for criterion-referenced tests are examined; they are found to be intrinsically arbitrary and are often examples of misdirected precision and axiomatization. The term, criterion referenced, originally referred to a technique for making test scores meaningful by controlling the test…