Background: This study investigates how the criterion-referenced (CR) approach has impacted relationships between goals, classroom practices, and student achievement in English education in Japan from 1994 to the present, a period covering three government-mandated administrations of a national curriculum (Course of Study). No study has…

Background: The pedagogical and status implications of assessment in physical education (PE) have been recognised in the past. How students perceive being assessed and graded is a neglected area, however. While some studies have garnered students' perceptions of assessment when no grade is awarded or the stakes are relatively low, we know less…

Knowing what students should be able to accomplish academically is the first step in knowing how to write accurate Individual Education Plan (IEP) goals. By giving students short Curriculum-Based Measurements (CBM) in areas such as reading, writing, and mathematics, teachers are able to determine current level of performance, or baseline. Teachers…

Achieving learning standards is at the forefront of current educational philosophy, and is the goal of sound educational practice. That "all children can learn" and there will be "no child left behind" presume that teaching and assessment practices must benefit all children. Agreement in principle is nearly universal. Practical implementation,…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether matching navigation mode of a learning environment with learners' preferred navigation mode would facilitate their learning in a web environment. Sixty-eight undergraduate students were randomly assigned to treatments (linear vs. nonlinear navigation mode) and received four criterion tests designed…

Professional educators as goal formulators are presented as the responsible agents of accountability. Norm- and criterion-referenced testing are compared and suggestions for accountability and goal development are given. (RAO)

Two sets of obstacles are discussed as part of a major weakness in the methodology of a criterion-reference measurement, and it is suggested that no criterion referenced measure should be published without an explicit statement of how its items were derived from objectives, and by what means item-objective congruence was determined. (Author/STS)

Measurement specialists and instructional personnel can join forces to create tests that are valid indicators of important skills and are instructionally attainable targets for teachers. Such tests can revolutionize education. (Author/IRT)

Author presented a six-point model for purposes of diagnosing program success or lack of success. (Editor/RK)

Author attempted to call attention to some serious problems with respect to the general goals of education, and to suggest that these problems are left untouched by most of the newer developments in the specification of educational objectives. (Author/RK)

Since mid-1971 the Instructional Objectives Exchange has been engaged in a major effort to develop and disseminate criterion-referenced tests in the fields of reading, mathematics, language arts, and social studies. This paper isolates the chief technical decision-alternatives faced in this project, such as: (1) the optimal number of tests to…

The purpose of this study was to develop a taxonomy which would categorize high level physics problem-solving behaviors, and to examine the usefulness of such a classification system. This classification of learning objectives is based on complexity, a nonarbitrary measure which does not rely upon comparison between students but rather is based on…

The relationship between instruction and a test is defined as a parallel content-valid relation. This article describes the PLANA procedure, which approaches the problem of content validity by applying constructional rules for producing or judging the content validity relationship between the instructional objective and the items. (BW)

The author began his education career committed to curriculum, not measurement. After years of using teacher-made and standardized tests as instructional afterthoughts, he recognized the superiority of criterion-referenced testing and the influence of high-stakes testing on instruction. He then became involved with developing such tests on a…