Aspects of design and procedures used in the evaluation of a performance contract are discussed, and the project and findings are briefly summarized. The Virginia performance contract in reading was carried out in seven school districts. Evaluation of the project showed that although instructional changes that utilized desirable individualized…

Those who are charged with the evaluation of an educational program or school or effects of teaching often must consider how well students do on the variety of standardized tests they take in the course of a school year. This overview describes common types of tests students take in large-scale programs. Criterion-referenced tests are tests that…

Effective assessment is crucial to outcome-based learning programs. One choice to be made in such programs is whether assessment of student learning should be carried out within course structures or external to them. Advantages to each approach are suggested. The overall recommendation is for external assessment. (Author/MLW)

U.S. universities and colleges offering distance education courses have increased immensely since 1998, and by 2004 it was expected that distance learners will constitute about 14% of all those enrolled in degree programs. In its preliminary review of distance learning, the Institute for Higher Education Policy (1998) emphasized the need for…

Results from three small-scale investigations of specific aspects of bilingual schooling as well as results of a more traditional large-scale evaluation of bilingual education programs in downstate Illinois are presented. The three small studies were designed to assess natural language in the classroom, compare criterion-referenced versus…

The 1975 Community/Junior College Conference sought to define and describe evaluation, discuss measuring devices, and underscore the ethical reasons for fair evaluation. William P. Gorth began by discussing the purpose of evaluation--to provide data to a specified decision-maker for decision-making--and the implications which could be drawn from…

The 1973 statewide (Maryland) educational accountability plan, for which this report was compiled, called for the development and establishment of statewide and local goals in reading, writing, and mathematics; a comprehensive and uniform statewide testing program; procedures for collecting data on student, home, community, and school…

Although dealing broadly with issues involving program evaluation, this paper is especially concerned with large-scale evaluations of federally funded education programs that are national in scope and, to some extent at least, compensatory in nature. The paper concentrates on a few basic problem areas that seem inherent in the concept of…

A description of two proposals for alleviating the racial and ethnic bias in tests of achievement used in schools is presented. One of them entails adding steps to the construction procedures used in building norm referenced achievement tests; the second entails using criterion-referenced achievement tests rather than standardized tests for…

Evaluation of ongoing educational programs must necessarily differ from the basic research design; it must change to meet the changes of the program and its environment. Over the three years of the operation of the Philadelphia "Let's Be Amigos" bilingual program, the kinds of data generated in the program evaluation have evolved in response to…

The Bureau of Indian Affairs Task Force on Testing has developed a testing policy to aid Native American students in securing quality education and to improve the quality of the Bureau's educational programs. The Task Force reached the conclusion that most if not all commercially available standardized or norm-referenced tests unfairly…

This evaluation of reading programs funded by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Title I, in Vermont provided an assessment of the success of the programs. It was prepared to assist classroom teachers in improving instructional programs. The Prescriptive Reading Inventory was developed as a criterion referenced test to aid instruction. It…

The question of how standardized tests can be better developed to improve educational program evaluation is probed in this paper. After the first section's brief introduction, section 2 explores the thesis that tests developed in terms of selection and inference may not serve current social functions of educational testing. To clarify this thesis,…

In 1980, the New York City Board of Education set reading standards that fourth- and seventh-grade students were required to achieve before being promoted. The Gates Program was established to provide remedial education to those students failing to meet the standards. A total of 15,705 students in the two grades failed to meet the standards in…

The reliability of criterion referenced tests, which are often used to evaluate health education programs, may be conceptualized in different ways. Classical conceptualizations of test reliability have limited usefulness when applied to health-related criterion referenced tests. When a cutting score is set, test reliability can be represented as…