An alternative method of identifying effective schools, based on the concept of effective schools as statistically atypical, was tested. This paper investigates the issue of consistency of the identification of what is termed "exceptional" schools. The following tests were administered to all first through fourth graders in 431 schools…

The Progress in Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) was developed to help improve the teaching of reading and the acquisition of reading skills around the world, and was approved by the IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) General Assembly as an essential component of the IEA's regular cycle of core studies,…

THIS MANUAL DESCRIBES PROPOSED SCORING PROCEDURES FOR THE MINNESOTA TEST OF CREATIVE THINKING AND WRITING. TEST FORMS FOR SIX VERBAL TASKS AND THREE NONVERBAL TASKS ARE PRESENTED. FOR MOST TASKS, THIS SCORING MANUAL HAS EXTRACTED FROM THE TEST PROTOCOLS FOUR SCORES TO REPRESENT FOUR ABILITIES OF CREATIVE THINKING-- FLUENCY, FLEXIBILITY,…

An open-category task was administered to 180 elementary students. Three modes of response (related to the ways students acquire attributes for objects) were used to score the tasks. Qualitative changes in the three modes were analyzed, and the results supported a qualitative change in the modes of response. (Author/GDC)

Although the design of the writing task itself may present assessment problems, the scoring of the piece of writing raises the greatest difficulties for large-scale testing of writing ability. A study investigated whether teachers and staff members of the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) (1) scored the same way, (2) agreed with each other in…

Discusses issues associated with the use of holistic and analytic scoring methods in large-scale student assessments. Reviews the education literature and describes the recent Saskatchewan study comparing the results of the two scoring approaches applied to an achievement test taken by about 1,600 third graders. (SLD)

Describes an action-research study conducted in a third-grade classroom that integrates mathematical problem solving with the writing process through the use of the Mathematician's Chair. Contains 14 references. (ASK)

Examines the results of instruction in administering the Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) in three teacher training programs. Focuses on the examination of the scoring of the IRI in simulation exercises by preservice teachers after instruction in the administration and scoring of the IRI. Concludes that the preservice teachers did not accurately…

A comparison was made of Durrell Analysis of Reading Difficulty and informal reading inventory (IRI) independent and instructional level designations for 15 children, aged 9 to 11 years, who had been referred to a diagnostic clinic for reading assessment. The children's reading performance was first scored according to procedures outlined in the…

To test some aspects of Skinnerian programed instruction, a 241-frame program on Swedish grammar was presented to students 10 to 12 years old. Skinnerian insistence on student-constructed overt responses and on presenting the "key answer" after each frame were contrasted with covert responses and key answer frequencies less than 100…

An overview of LEAP (Learning Environments for Accelerated Progress) project outcomes draws data from original scoring protocols developed by the LEAP project. These scoring protocols (or "measures") were developed to assess students' progress in the composition of three text genres: narrative, expert, and explanation. Initial analyses…

Using responses of 123 elementary school teachers, a battery of performance-assessment tasks designed to generate responses to reading tests was evaluated from task development and scoring perspectives. More than one dozen types of errors were identified. Practical outcomes of the study and improvement of task development and scoring are…

Test items and procedures for administering and scoring individual tests of second and fifth grade reading and mathematics are presented. The major purpose of this individual testing is validation of the group tests which make up the battery of the Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study (BTES). Five mathematics tasks, involving a set of blocks, have…

Portfolio assessment was investigated as a method of evaluating elementary school students' competence in writing. The study comprised an empirical study of the utility and meaningfulness of using a holistic/analytic scoring rubric to score students' portfolios and a qualitative analysis of scoring approaches drawing on raters' critiques of the…