On April 5, 2002, the Montana Office of Public Instruction (OPI) entered into a compliance agreement with the U.S. Department of Education to bring the state into compliance with the provisions of the following federal laws: Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1994, P.L. 103-382 and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)…

The author examines four testing alternatives for minority group children who consistently do poorly on standardized tests: off-grade-level testing; not testing minority children at all; changing to an easier test; and criterion-referenced testing. He favors the last alternative. (SJL)

Language assessment is reviewed as a technology which could become more effective for classroom use through school-based development and greater use of alternatives to standardized testing. (Author)

For 50 years, large-scale educational achievement testing in the United States was dominated by a (low-cost) multiple-choice assessment strategy. The problem is finding adequate financial resources to support constructed-response methods used in authentic or performance testing. Matrix sampling, featuring low-proportion sampling of both students…

In this paper Cognitive Abilities Test scores are compared directly with moderated GCSE scores awarded to the same group of pupils. For ease of interpretation the comparisons are presented in a graphical form. Whilst some provisional and tentative conclusions are drawn about the reliability of GCSE art, questions are raised about the general…

The purpose of this report is to provide descriptive data regarding the test scores of Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) students in grades 4, 8 and 10 in reading, math and science, as reported to the School Choice Demonstration Project 2007-2008. The tables, graphs, and histograms presented in this report provide a snapshot of these…

Reviews of approximately 60 assessment instruments useful with young exceptional children are provided. Tests were selected on the basis of their popularity in eary childhood education literature and their frequency of use by educators in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Reviews are intended to provide descriptive information regarding the content,…

Notes problems in using reading tests intended for children when testing adults; attempts to clarify some of these problems by making explicit the assumptions implicit in the practice of using children's reading tests with adults. (GT)

Living in an age of communication, literacy is an extremely integral part of our society. We are impacted by literature during our infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. "Literacy for the New Millennium" includes information from specialists in the field who discuss the influence of popular culture, media, and technology on…

The discussion on criterion-referenced (CRT) and norm-referenced achievement tests (NRT) is divided into two parts: definitions and use. The authors contrast CRTs, tests which compare an individual's performance to some specified behavioral criterion of proficiency, and NRTs, tests which compare an individual's score to scores of others. They also…

A criterion-referenced test is one that is used to identify an individual student's status with respect to an established standard of performance. This standard of performance, a performance objective, describes the expected student behavioral changes and the conditions and criteria under which these changes will occur. The specificity of the…

A set of guidelines for evaluating criterion-referenced tests is presented. Additionally, 11 sets of extant criterion-referenced tests are evaluated using these guidelines. (JKS)

The Canadian Institute for Research in Behavioral and Social Sciences of Calgary was awarded a contract by the Provincial Government of Alberta to assess student skills and knowledge in reading and written composition. Here evaluation is defined and the use of standardized and criterion referenced tests for evaluating reading performance are…

Argues that student performance on standardized tests should not be the basis for educational reform and presents suggestions for expanding the criteria by which school success is judged. (SRT)