When one instructor began to use cooperative learning groups as a main teaching strategy in teacher education courses, she designed a large group oral exam format to take the place of traditional paper-and-pencil testing. The group oral exam format reduced text anxiety as there was no right or wrong response; it drew on both the cognitive and…

In introductory psychology courses, the desire to cover content can conflict with the desire to acquaint students with psychological thinking processes. The IDEAL method is a group problem solving quiz technique which addresses both of these goals. In the process, instructors choose key concepts from a given reading and divide the class into…

A study was done of the relationship between the American College Testing (ACT) Assessment and the ACT/COMP (College Outcomes Measures Program) test and general intellectual ability of college students. The subjects for the study were 133 undergraduates, mostly freshmen, in Introductory Psychology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The…

This paper examines long-range problems caused by test-controlled schooling. It looks at the demands of both curricular and accountability uses of tests from the point of view of the urban school district's testing office. On the basis of interviews with 12 New Orleans teachers and the experiences of the authors in working in two large city…

A study was conducted to ascertain whether additional focus on test-taking strategies might significantly improve the passing rate of Miami-Dade Community College (MDCC) students on the College Level Academic Skills Test (CLAST). All students who took the summer and fall 1984 administrations of the CLAST were included in the study. Original…

A group supportive testing procedure and acculturation level are investigated as to their influence upon achievement test scores of 150 culturally diverse inner city school students in grades four through six. The group supportive testing procedure was specifically designed as a facilitation strategy that attempted to mirror the more typical…

Technical considerations associated with item selection and reliability assessment are considered in relation to criterion-referenced tests constructed to provide group information. The purpose is to emphasize test building and the evaluation of test scores in program evaluation studies. It is stressed that an evaluator employ a performance or…

To supplement an experiment at the University of Northern Iowa on the effectiveness of college-level instruction in freshman composition, the University of Iowa conducted its own experiment on the evaluation of freshman composition. This experiment was designed to determine (1) which method of rating papers is more reliable--the "general…

This report describes the general plan for a study to clarify the interpretation of group performance measures of student achievement. Group tests are the most efficient procedure for collecting achievement information from a large number of students, but they also require item formats that may be different from the form in which students normally…

This paper provides a historical review of national standardized testing and its relation to ethnic and racial minorities. In the pre-World War I period, psychological testing was conducted on the large masses of immigrants that were arriving in the U.S., and on black and white army draftees. Generally these tests showed that black draftees and…

This paper describes Project HELP (Highlighting Early Learning Problems) stated to have been designed to determine or to develop a battery of screening instruments to identify those K-1 students who manifest learning problems indicative of exceptionality. The purposes, objectives, and a summary of the types of evaluation questions the study sought…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of intelligence test results communicated to teachers in various ways by elementary school counselors on (a) teachers' perceptions, and (b) subsequent student achievement and IQ scores. Teacher awareness of student IQ appeared not to influence, to a statistically significant degree, her…

The environmental perceptions of 144 randomly selected freshman students at a southwestern junior college were measured using the College and University Environment Scales (CUES). The sample was equally divided between male and female students, and among three groups: city commuters, rural commuters, and campus residents. Differences between group…

An experiment employing a 2x2x3 factorial design sought to determine the extent to which socially disadvantaged elementary school students' unfamiliarity with some terms in a verbal subsection of a group intelligence test may account for their relatively poor performance on such tests. Training was provided so as to attempt improvement in these…

Two-factor analyses of variance with multiple measurements on one factor were conducted for the five sections of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and six language groups, and also for the items of each section, based on data collected at the first administration of this form of the test, in October 1969. the principal findings,…