The eight articles in this compilation provide various approaches and techniques for use by classroom teachers in the informal evaluation of student reading performance. The first article outlines the many purposes for which informal measures may be used and briefly describes the various forms such measures may take, while the second focuses on…

Standardized tests of writing ability have individual and shared limitations and deficiencies that should be acknowledged by test designers and users. Most institutions use the portions of standardized tests that test ability to proofread and edit, but they do not use the optional essay sections that actually require students to write. To assure…

This instructional training package introduces practitioners to methods for developing, validating, using, and reporting criterion-referenced tests. It provides a comprehensive presentation of criterion-referenced testing technology. The package emphasizes the most recent substantive and technological advances in the field that are both important…

Principles and guidelines for the use of expert judgment of experiential learning are outlined. The report deals with a number of basic issues that apply to expert judgment, such as the role of the evaluator in defining criteria, and structuring the assessment procedure so that it will be reliable and valid. The importance of establishing…

The Parent Opinion Inventory was developed to accomplish three goals: (1) to assess parents' attitudes toward their children's school and its programs; (2) to provide an opportunity for parents to make specific recommendations for improvement; and (3) to provide decision-making data relative to program development, policy formation, administrative…

An important part of any school's self-evaluation is student input or feedback. This inventory was developed in order to accomplish two goals: assessing student attitudes toward many facets of the school, and providing an opportunity for students to make recommendations for improvement. Thirty-four multiple choice items collect information on…

This paper presents a critique of the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory's (N.W.R.E.L.) review of the Mat-Sea-Cal Oral Proficiency Tests in their publication, Oral Language Tests for Bilingual Students. That publication was released in July, 1976 as a guide to administrators and program coordinators in the selection of instruments for…

Because the achievement battery traditionally administered to Brazilian college bound students may discriminate against those who cannot afford to attend the best high schools or preparatory courses, tests were developed to measure aptitude for higher education, independent of ability or actual knowledge of course content. The focus of the…

A detailed description is provided of the variable utilization of curriculum resources (UCR), which is part of the analysis in phase I of the Evaluation of Practices in Individualized Schooling. The variable is defined; the questionnaires on which the variable is based are listed; the procedures used to scale the variable are explained; the…

A South Texas survey conducted in 1975 investigated the reading performance of Mexican American students enrolled in a bilingual program to determine whether or not students achieved significantly different reading scores on parallel Spanish and English versions of an appropriate test (Guidance Testing Associates Inter-American Test of Reading).…

An ongoing series of experiments has extended Rose's information processing approach to job performance assessment. Each study investigated cognitive tasks from the literature on memory, psycholinquistics, and visual information processing, for potential inclusion in the test battery. Each task was then evaluated against three criterion areas: (1)…

This article analyzes potential problems in using standardized achievement tests in early childhood education settings. The first problem discussed is whether the outcomes typically measured by standardized achievement tests are the outcomes about which early childhood educators are most concerned. Second, it is argued that a concern for test…

The Basic Occupational Literacy Test (BOLT) was developed as an achievement test of basic skills in reading and arithmetic, for educationally disadvantaged adults. The objective was to develop a test appropriate for this population with regard to content, format, instructions, timing, norms, and difficulty level. A major issue, the use of grade…

The Responsibility for Student Achievement Questionnaire (RSA) was designed to measure elementary or secondary school teachers' beliefs regarding their responsibility for their students' academic successes and failures. The 30 items were constructed in the alternative-weighting format; for each item describing student success or failure, the…

Because existing standardized college examination tests did not accurately measure the potential for learning of bilingual/bicultural populations, the Border Community College Consortium began in 1971 to develop two standardized tests to address the strengths and weaknesses of Mexican American students in writing, reading, and listening to the…