This report on the National Assistance Project for Special Education Technology provides a description, evaluation of the project, case studies, and vignettes. The project provided technical assistance to local school districts to implement technology within special education programs. In year 1, technical assistance was provided to 27 local…

This study examined attitudes toward inclusive education among rural educators serving students with mild disabilities, with attention to the effectiveness of three models to promote attitude change. The three interventions assessed were a 1-day inservice meeting followed by a pilot inclusion project during the academic year; a graduate course…

In March 1992 the Arizona State Department of Education and educators across the state conducted a pilot study of 67 performance assessments developed for the Arizona Student Assessment Program (ASAP). This report describes various aspects of the reliability and validity of the 67 assessments (primarily constructed response) developed by The…

This final report describes activities and accomplishments of Project EPIC (Effective Partner Interaction in the Community), a 3-year federally supported project in Georgia to facilitate the establishment and implementation of effective educational practices with students having deaf-blindness. The project was designed to expand students' present…

The National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching is working with the New York State Education Department to develop an assessment system that addresses both instructional and accountability concerns. The new system is intended to move the state to a system of performance assessments used in the service of ongoing teaching and…

The degree to which performance assessments meet their dual mandate to evaluate student learning and inform instructional practice is not adequately addressed through traditional concerns for reliability and validity. A possible approach is suggested for examining the cognitive activity students engage in during a performance assessment. The…

This paper compares descriptive information based on analyses of the pilot and live administrations of the Alabama High School Graduation Examination (AHSGE). The AHSGE, a product of decisions made in 1977 and 1984 by the Alabama State Board of Education, is composed of subject tests in reading, mathematics, and language. The pass score for each…

Six item bias detection techniques (distractor analysis, the Mantel-Haenszel procedure, Angoff's delta plot, Angoff's modified delta plot, Stricker's partial correlation index, and direct comparison of item difficulties) were compared for their ability to identify biased items at three stages of test development. The techniques were applied to…

The usefulness of portfolios for professional development and reflection was studied in the disciplines of physical therapy and nursing. The student sample may not represent the larger population of professional students, but data are presented as useful in understanding more about the general phenomenon of use of portfolios in professional…

This paper studies whether examinee characteristics are systematically related to mode effect across paper and computer versions of the same instrument, using data from the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) of the Educational Testing Service in its Computer-Based Testing Pilot Study of 1991. The following characteristics of 1,114 examinees were…

In validating tests for course placement in college, the criterion variable is usually defined in terms of the grade earned in a particular standard course. This study considers the issue of interpreting incomplete (I) and withdrawal (W) grades either as unsuccessful outcomes or as missing data. The effects of either type of interpretation on…

Pilot projects designed to increase the access of young unemployed Australians to adult and community education (ACE) were undertaken in one rural and one metropolitan adult, community and further education region with significant rates of unemployment among individuals aged 15-24 years. Two consortia were selected to conduct the pilot programs,…

This paper describes the research agenda at Technology Based Learning and Research (TBLR) at Arizona State University, whose primary research mission is to provide information to guide the development and subsequent application of its technology based instruction (TBI) products. It is noted that the research question at the heart of the agenda is…

Ways to approach the evaluation of South Carolina's Parent Education Program are examined. The program's purpose is to improve children's school success by strengthening the family, particularly during the children's first 5 years. Program goals are to: (1) demonstrate effective methods of parent training and support that will enable parents to…

To address an unacceptable failure and withdrawal rate in an introductory psychology course at Ulster County Community College (UCCC), in New York, a project was undertaken to develop a Learning Assistance in Psychology course to help students with skills and concepts. First, a literature review indicating the need for remediation highlighted the…