In 1972, the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia instituted the Regents' Testing Program (RTP) to provide systemwide information on the status of student competence in reading and writing and to provide a uniform means of identifying those students who fail to attain minimum levels of competence in these areas. Since 1972, some…

An approach to testing reading comprehension among Dutch speaking university students of German for academic purposes is described. The test items were designed to reflect the most typical comprehension errors made by speakers of Dutch when reading German academic discourse. The most frequent errors were due to vocabulary and declension…

An index identifying factors leading to unusual response patterns by students, the modified caution index, was computed for the reading comprehension and study skills items of Booklet 5 from the 1979 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading achievement survey given to the 9-, 13- and 17-year-old samples. The analyses focused on…

A 1978 study (Torgesen, Bowen and Ivey) of the structure and modality variables of the Visual-Aural Digit Span (VADS) test was replicated to determine: (1) if the effects generalized across age; (2) if differences between simultaneous and sequential visually presented items were due to mode of presentation or the amount of study time; (3) the…

A study was conducted to determine whether a particular diagnostic assessment and monitoring program would have an effect on class achievement, regardless of curriculum used. The program consisted of a series of criterion-referenced tests coordinated with sequenced lessons in reading, oral language, and arithmetic, with the results charted by…

Having implemented a testing procedure using the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests to identify recruits with reading deficiencies, the United States Navy conducted a study comparing the performance of recruits on three different reading tests. A total of 716 recruits completed the comprehension portion of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests, the Tests…

The Austin Independent School District Office of Research and Evaluation (AISD-ORE) has recently completed a three year study of the effects of retention on elementary students. As in other studies comparing the academic achievement of elementary retainees and similar students not retained, findings indicated that promoted students generally show…

Objective referenced tests were scaled using the Rasch latent trait model to measure Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) in grades one through eight. The tests, in the areas of reading, language and math, were scaled and linked through students, blocks of items, and test item banks. The study tests latent trait theory in a public school setting.…

A comparison of the educational and occupational aspirations and expectations of 900 seniors in four Chicago high schools showed that college prep students had the highest educational and occupational aspirations and expectations. Vocational students had the greatest discrepancy between occupational aspirations and expectations, while general…

The diagnostic potential of a structured cloze test used in the reading measure of the New York State Regents Competency Testing Program was examined. Two passages at the third and fifth grade levels were administered to 12 low achieving fifth grade students, first in a standardized cloze format requiring the students to generate responses and…

Discussed are characteristics of criterion referenced reading tests for use with learning disabled (LD) children, and analyzed are the Basic Educational Skills Inventory (BESI), the Prescriptive Reading Inventory (PRI), and the Cooper-McGuire Diagnostic Work-Analysis Test (CooperMcGuire). Criterion referenced tests are defined; and problems in…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) measures the educational achievement of nationally representative samples of students in grades 4, 8, and 12. Local educational agencies tend to view the NAEP as a benchmark to which the educational achievement of their students can be compared. In particular, state departments of education…

As constructed-response items become an integral part of educational assessments, setting student performance standards on constructed-response items has become an important issue. Two standard-setting methods, one used for setting standards on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in reading in grade 8 and the other used to set…

This study tested the hypthesis that the reading gains of compensatory education pupils in grades one and four exposed to intensive test wiseness instruction would not differ significantly from the reading gains in a randomly assigned control group. Schools offering ESEA Title I classes (N=48) were randomly assigned to the treatment and control…

This paper identifies and assesses factors that may characterize students at risk of dropping out, based on a ninth grade class of Cincinnati (Ohio) public school students which was followed for five years, from 1984-85 to 1988-89. The paper aims to develop a quick, easy, and reliable method that teachers, counselors, and principals can use to…