Research conducted at the Stanford Center for Research and Development in Teaching. (HW)

A communication profile of each student entering the Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD) is composed of rankings in five areas: expressive manual communication including signing, fingerspelling, and synchronization; speech intelligibility; articulation; speech reading, including words and sentences; and audiometric test performance…

The Southwest Regional Laboratory English Language and Concepts Program for Spanish Speaking Children (LCS) is designed to help Spanish speaking children produce and comprehend English language skills required in early elementary grades. The tryout exercised, under standard school conditions, the materials and procedures of the LCS instructional…

The purpose of the study was to explore the formation of teachers' expectations of students' academic performance. First-grade teachers were interviewed or asked to respond to questionnaires concerning their pupils, and ranked their students on expected academic performance at three periods in the school year. Teachers rankings of expected…

This symposium presents an alternative to the numerical mode of reporting, and describes the work that has been done, and the work that is continuing, in the area of computer-generated narrative-format testing reports. Computer narrative testing reports are in a verbal form that eliminates the use of almost all numbers and technical terms. These…

The author presents critical comments on a paper by John Siegfried, in which Siegfried reports on a controlled experiment to determine whether the educational experience of being a proctor is sufficiently valuable to justify awarding academic credit. Siegfried argues that a semester of proctoring teaches a student more than a one-semester,…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federally funded testing group, found that 17-year-olds today know less about science than high school students in 1969-70 and 1972-73, when previous assessments were conducted. Here is a closer look at that assessment. (Author/RK) Aspect of National Assessment (NAEP) dealt with in this document:…

Teachers' ratings of academic ability in mathematics; and English were regressed on test scores in a sample of second-grade Irish students. Within the terms of the model, teachers' ratings were only marginally less defensible than ratings based on a previous administration of the same tests. (Author/DWH)

The theory, presented by Ginsberg (TM 508 964), that quantitative indicators are likely to be corrupted when used for purposes of accountability is supported by the results of the Learning Disabilities Identification Study. The quantitative indicator in this case had to do with selection of pupils eligible for services for the handicapped. (BW)

Advantages of three methods for evaluating kindergarten children (standardized tests, early identification procedures, and criterion-referenced tests) are explained. (GW)

In determining what will best help learning, the timeliness and possible reversibility of teachers' decisions are influenced by standardized achievement tests. Ways tests can supplement other performance information and confirm or challenge teachers' impressions of student achievement are described. (CM)

A study of six children (ages 3-9) with autism assessed whether manipulation of variables related to motivation and attention in children with autism would influence performance on standardized tests. Results found the children showed higher scores when conditions were modified to improve the likelihood of responding to test stimuli. (Author/CR)

The following ways of linking results from distinct assessments to use them for multiple purposes are reviewed: (1) equating; (2) calibration; (3) statistical moderation; (4) prediction; and (5) social moderation. The characteristics of these methods, their requirements, and the comparative inferences they support are described. (SLD)

Whether informal subject-oriented prior-knowledge state assessment or information progress-assessment results in increased study pace or a positive effect on final test results was studied with over 9500 open education college students. Student characteristics related to differences in participation in information-assessment procedures were…

Drawing on their legal expertise and their experience working with public school districts, John W. Borkowski and Maree Sneed discuss the controversies surrounding the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). They acknowledge that its principal benefits lie in its recognition of the right of each child to learn and be assessed by…