Many argue that the conventional high school transcript has become irrelevant to today's best practices in teaching, learning, and assessment. With more and more school leaders turning to alternate, competency-based approaches for learning, crediting and transcripts can follow suit by drawing on badging, micro-crediting, digital portfolios of…

One of the US Department of Education's key priorities is turning around the nation's persistently low-achieving schools, yet exactly how to identify low-performing schools is a task left to state policy makers, and a myriad of definitions have been utilized. In addition, exactly how to recognize when a school begins to turn around is not well…

An approach to improving classroom instruction is offered that advances a longitudinal, cyclical presentation of instruction, its evaluation, and revision over time. This approach is distinguished by student self-graphing of student performances, a teacher's log of changes made in instruction, and a class graph kept by the teacher or students. The…

Two years of pilot projects are described that attempt to measure special education pupils' progress without being overly global or overly restrictive. It is explained that to be helpful to students, parents, teachers, and other staff, an evaluation system should provide connections between individualized education programs (IEPs), instructional…

The use of a portfolio as an "alternative transcript" is discussed. Concepts explored include evaluation of prior learning, assessment of prior learning, rationale for developing a portfolio, and the articulation of verifiable learning outcomes with course and program objectives. (Author/MLW)

Expert systems rely on the formalization of decision rules created from the knowledge of recognized experts. Since transfer credit evaluation relies upon admission officers (the experts), it would appear that transfer credit evaluation could be assisted by expert systems. Automation in the University System of Georgia is described. (MLW)

The evaluation of training and education sponsored by the Armed Forces, business, and industry, as well as prior learning assessment has been standardized. One method of standardizing the transcripting of extrainstitutional education to increase its acceptance in traditional institutions is described. (Author/MLW)

Admissions committees are becoming more sensitive to nongrade variables in the selection process of professional college applicants. One method of providing useful and revealing information is shown to be through a structured personal interview, such as the "SRI Dentist Perceiver," developed by Selection Research, Inc., in Lincoln,…

The North Warwickshire (England) College of Technology and Art created student profiles of students enrolled in a precaring course, a one-year course conceived as an introduction to work in the caring field for young people of low academic achievement. It was decided that a master profile should be created to cover all low-level courses across the…

Take a walk down Memory Lane... In 1940 when AACRAO's new release "The Work of the Registrar" was written: Yale tuition was fifty dollars per quarter; colleges had curfews for women and dress codes; the average salary was $1,299 annually; first class stamps were three cents; and colleges sent progress reports home to parents. Read about what has…

Educational Assessment is at the cornerstone of education in the 1990s. Advocates for alternative assessment believe that the new tasks should be redesigned to more closely resemble real learning tasks. Portfolio assessment encourages an integration between assessment and instruction and results in several positive educational outcomes. Portfolios…

More than ever before teachers, principals, and superintendents are joining with parents and citizens of the community in examining and appraising what the schools are trying to do and how their work can be adequately supported. One of the topics that comes up for frequent discussion in the high school field is the Carnegie Unit. It has been our…