As part of a larger project, we studied how a foreign language test got discursively constructed in the talk of upper-secondary-school leavers. A group of students were asked to keep an oral diary to record their ideas, feelings and experiences of preparing for and taking the test over the last spring term of school, as part of a high-stakes…

The relationship between the frequency of African-American English (AAE) features used by African-American adolescent males (n = 16) and their performance on the seven clusters comprising the "Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery-Revised" (WLPB-R) was investigated. All participants were between the ages of 15 and 19 years who had a…

While California community colleges are open to all students eligible and able to benefit, most students must demonstrate that they are ready for college-level academic work by passing the college's placement exam once they enroll. Because California does not explicitly define college readiness standards for high school students, the placement…

In this paper the effect of interaction between learners of English as a second language during a dictogloss task on the acquisition of the passive form is investigated. Subjects were 34 Dutch high school students in their fifth year of English. The experimental group was given two dictogloss tasks, which consisted in the reconstruction in small…

Presented at the Annual National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) in New York in March 2008. This presentation explores how different item weighting can affect the effective weights, validity coefficents and test reliability of composite scores among test takers.

This paper examines the nature of confidence in relation to cognitive abilities, personality traits, and metacognition. Confidence was measured as it was expressed in answers to each test item during the administration of reading and listening sections of the TOEFL® iBT. The confidence scores were correlated with the accuracy scores from the TOEFL…

"Informed math self-placement," a program implemented at American River College in Sacramento, California, to determine students' readiness for college-level math, has been in place for three years. This case study describes the development and implementation of math self-placement at American River. Math self-placement consists of a…

State leaders, parents, and business people want to be sure that students truly learn what they are being taught in school. Today, basic skills are not sufficient to guarantee that children will find good jobs and become productive citizens. As a result, the Alabama State Legislature passed its Education Accountability Law in 1995. The new…

The e-rater® system has been used by ETS for automated essay scoring since 1999. This paper describes a new version of e-rater (v.2.0) that differs from the previous one (v.1.3) with regard to the feature set and model building approach. The paper describes the new version, compares the new and previous versions in terms of performance, and…

This PowerPoint report summarizes AISD student demographic and performance results at high schools as of the end of the 2007-2008 school year.

The Language Teacher Research Series aims to connect research and practice by highlighting the insights that teachers themselves describe after examining their own practices. This first volume of the five-volume series presents research conducted by language teachers at all levels, from high school English teachers to English language teacher…

The handling of this survey was intrusted to Dr. Leonard V. Koos, of the University of Chicago. With great skill he has, working on a full-time basis during his free quarters from the University of Chicago and part time during other quarters, brought it to a conclusion. This manuscript was prepared by Helen M. Eddy, associate professor of romance…