The goal of the East Asian Curriculum Project (EACP) of Columbia University is to support education on Asia at the secondary and elementary levels. The project has developed a variety of curriculum resources and collaborated with state and local educators in designing units about Asia for teachers. Each packet contains brief resource lists along…

Volume 2, the second of eight publications developed by the Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) as part of the "Texas School Dropout Survey Project," focuses on the issue of the computation of a dropout rate. Three important factors which influence the mathematical computation of a dropout rate are identified: time…

Volume 4, the fourth of eight publications developed by the Intercultural Development Research Association as part of the "Texas School Dropout Survey Project," focuses on school district research and procedures. It describes a survey of 143 districts with dropout identification procedures conducted to examine those procedures. Findings…

Using techniques of inference appraisal suggested by T. A. van Dijk and R. J. Sternberg, a study investigated whether by assigning particular writing tasks it would be possible to influence the way readers produce inferences about a text. Subjects, 52 ninth grade students, read especially prepared booklets and completed either a paraphrasing,…

A study examined the effects of peer evaluation on writing performance and attitudes of ninth-grade students. Data were collected from 11 teachers in eight different schools. Each teacher taught two ninth grade English classes, one according to traditional methods and one with the experimental condition in which students taught each other by…

Case-based learning is one method that can be used to foster critical thinking and schema construction. Students need to be provided with problem solving lessons in meaningful learning contexts for critical thinking to take place. In order for schema construction to occur, a framework needs to be provided that helps readers to elaborate upon new…

This publication contains curriculum guides for social studies courses in the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades. Each course is divided into several units which are organized in the following manner: overview; focusing questions; topic objectives; materials; and suggested activities. The grade 7 course, "Canada: An Overview," is…

Using a case study approach, this study focuses on a physical science teacher's method of pacing instruction and the use of target students. This report includes an examination of: (1) the teacher's perceptions of the target students in the science class; (2) possible reasons for certain students being target students; and (3) types of questions…

Maryland is one of the states which recently developed new requirements for high school graduation. A preliminary evaluation of these new state standards has raised a number of issues about graduation standards and their assessment. The Maryland State Department of Education examined statewide policies and guidelines for high schools between 1982…

Each spring students in fifth, seventh and ninth grades in the San Diego City Schools complete a series of tests as part of the annual Districtwide Testing Program. The Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (CTBS) are used to measure student knowledge of various broad areas of the curriculum. This bulletin presents results of student achievement in…

This document was designed to help teachers provide ninth grade students in New York City with opportunities to learn about scientific processes as well as basic reasoning skills which underlie problem-solving processes in scientific and nonscientific disciplines. The first section of the guide, "The Environment," contains lessons which…

The Sequential Mathematics Sequence provides an integrated course of study for grades 9-11 in New York City. This document presents lesson plans for part one of the first-year course, designed for ninth grade. The curriculum interweaves algebra, geometry, logic, probability, statistics, and trigonometry, with the emphasis in the 60 lessons in this…

This paper examines the sample-free test calibration claim, derived from Rasch's structural model for test items, by comparing item difficulty and log ability estimates between different samples of ability levels. Three tests from the Ball Aptitude Battery--Inductive Reasoning, Paper Folding; and Vocabulary--were administered to three samples of…

The viability of the Partial Credit Model (PCM) of G. N. Masters (1982) for scaling and banking individual essay prompts from a statewide writing assessment program was investigated. Preliminary analyses indicated the feasibility of using the PCM, the general polychotomous form of the Rasch model, with essay data from the Maryland Writing Test…

This curriculum guide is designed to assist teachers and supervisors in the implementation of the New York State Global Studies syllabus. The materials presented in this guide represent suggested approaches for teaching the unit on East Asia-Japan. The themes addressed are: the physical/historical setting, the dynamics of change, contemporary…