This study examined the relationship between teacher education students' scores on basic skills admission tests and graduating seniors' scores on the National Teacher Examinations (NTE) at Eastern Kentucky University. The 1981-82 basic skills test scores for 262 teacher education students were compared with their NTE scores taken in 1984-85 during…

The Act To Encourage the Expansion of Remedial Education Programs During Summer (P.A. 85-576), passed by the Connecticut General Assembly, provided local and regional boards of education with the opportunity to offer students in grades K through 8 remedial summer school services. Summer Incentive monies were granted to 25 programs from Fiscal Year…

This study adds to the effective schools debate a criticism of existing criteria--based on standardized achievement test profiles--for targeting schools for intervention programs. Qualitative and quantitative methods of gathering data result in conflicting assessments of the magnet elementary school studied as needing or not needing intervention.…

This paper examines remedial programs in colleges and discusses the relationship of those programs to diagnostic testing. The Basic Skills Placement Test (BSPT) is required of all College freshman in New Jersey public colleges. Mercer County Community College, used as an example throughout this paper, uses the BSPT as a basis for placing students…

This study focused on the identification and description of environmental characteristics and their relationship to basic skills exposure. The objectives of the study were to identify the major factors that characterize environments in which learning is intended to occur, and to delineate patterns of co-exposure to basic skills and environmental…

These four serial issues examine the effectiveness and appropriateness of a variety of assessment tests as well as their relationship to developmental education. Included are reviews of the following tests: (1) the Comparative Guidance and Placement Program, a self-scoring test of English and mathematics; (2) the Stanford Achievement Test, an…

Five years ago Los Angeles Unified School District administrators began efforts to ensure that teachers teach students what they are expected to learn and test them accordingly. The initial stage of this projected curriculum alignment was first of all to define the essential skills to be taught in the elementary grades and provide a list of these…

This research, conducted for California State Department of Education, is one component of a feasibility study focusing on ways to make the testing process more efficient by application of multi-purpose tests (MPT). MPT are designed, administered and scored to serve more than one purpose and to consolidate and unify testing programs as a partial…

Greater knowledge about the practical application of Rasch technology can help in avoiding misapplications and confusions in testing programs. Equal interval curriculum-based scaling makes possible the following improvements in measuring basic skills achievement by enabling testing programs to: (1) individualize the difficulty level of…

Some ninth-grade students from three Knoxville City high schools have continuously performed substantially less well than those from other city schools in the Tennessee State proficiency tests. A task force developed a plan to work with grade 8 in the middle schools and grade 9 in the high schools to prepare students to perform better on state…

A study examined various characteristics of learning environments that promote or retard the development of basic skills proficiency. Data on four school programs--vocational noncooperative, vocational cooperative, general education, and college preparatory--were collected in a repeated measure design via observations, testing, and interviews. A…

In 1990, a follow-up study was conducted of former students from the Adult Basic Education (ABE) and General Educational Development (GED) programs in Washington community colleges to assess the impact of these programs on the students. Data were gathered from the Student Management Information System and from interviews with 182 students who left…

A study was initiated in 1986 to collect systematic national data on the content and processes surrounding the delivery of vocational-technical education programs that could be used to help assess and describe the dynamics of high school vocational classrooms. The national database generated contained information from schools, classrooms, school…

Intended both to evaluate the California testing program's success in assessing student achievement in the basic skills and to suggest possible improvements in the program, this report includes an executive summary evaluating current testing procedures, describing experimental studies on new ways of testing and reporting testing information, and…

To evaluate the relative effectiveness of traditional versus computer managed instruction (CMI) basic skills programs for incarcerated adults, 359 male inmates from three traditional self-paced and three PLATO/CMI programs were given pretests in the Test of Adult Basic Education (TABE) and the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale (TSCS). Following three…