A mathematics achievement test was taken by 132 U.S. and 110 Japanese fifth graders. Scores were higher for the Japanese, and relatively better for computation than problem solving. The reverse was true for the U.S. students. Results are discussed in terms of amount and kind of exposure to mathematics. (SLD)

The grade improvement program "Where There's a Will There's an A" was evaluated with 36 experimental and 37 control group undergraduates. The approach and content of the evaluated materials appear inconsistent with the body of research on academic improvement, and study results do not indicate any improved achievement. (SLD)

Criterion-related validities of 2 laboratory practitioner certification examinations for medical technologists (MTs) and medical laboratory technicians (MLTs) were assessed for 81 MT and 70 MLT examinees. Validity coefficients are presented for both measures. Overall, summative ratings yielded stronger validity coefficients than ratings based on…

A model-testing approach for evaluating the stability of item response theory item parameter estimates (IPEs) in a pretest-posttest design is illustrated. Nineteen items from the Head Start Measures Battery were used. A moderately high degree of stability in the IPEs for 5,510 children assessed on 2 occasions was found. (TJH)

Thirty-one high school students in Newcastle (Australia) were trained to use adjunct maps strategically while studying a history text or were tested on the text without map training. Map training subjects had higher scores on all recall measures and main idea transfer measures at one and three weeks compared to those without map training. (SLD)

Two studies with 658 white and 353 African-American elementary school children performing reaction time tasks are offered in support of Spearman's hypothesis about the relative size of the mean African-American-white differences on mental tests as a function of the tests' loadings on psychometric "g." (SLD)

The analytically derived asymptotic standard errors (SEs) of maximum likelihood (ML) item estimates can be approximated by a mathematical function without examinees' responses to test items, and the empirically determined SEs of marginal maximum likelihood estimation (MMLE)/Bayesian item estimates can be obtained when the same set of items is…

Practical arts is a subject that not only promotes learners' better understanding of work in their daily lives, but also enables them to find ways to solve work-related problems by fostering basic skills and attitudes necessary for performing the work. The teaching of practical arts as a subject should be focused on developing creativity and…

Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) of silent reading fluency using the maze task has been shown to be a useful tool for evaluating students' silent reading skills. No prior research has evaluated whether the source of the maze passages has a relationship with the obtained reading scores. Prior research with CBM of oral reading fluency (ORF) has…

The Model-Assisted Reasoning in Science (MARS) project seeks to promote model-centered instruction as a means of improving middle-school science education. As part of the evaluation of the sixth-grade curriculum, performance of MARS and non-MARS students was compared on a curriculum-neutral task. Fourteen students participated in structured…

The transition from paper-based to computer-based assessment raises a number of important issues about how mode might affect children's performance and question answering strategies. In this project 104 eleven-year-olds were given two sets of matched mathematics questions, one set on-line and the other on paper. Facility values were analyzed to…

Recent studies show that national control of K-12 curriculum yields important payoffs in terms of greater curricular coherence and, as a result, higher test performance on international tests such as those used in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. This paper examines the connection between national control of curriculum and…

The collection of data by face-to-face interviews and questionnaires is common and literature in these areas is extensive; but few cases are reported in which respondents have been provided with a blank audio cassette tape, interview schedule, or open-ended questionnaire items, and been invited to record their own comments and forward these to the…

Results from an ongoing series of studies designed to describe changes in students' self-assessments across time are presented. In these studies, medical students predicted their performance on essay examinations in their first 2 years of medical school. Self-assessment is a valuable skill for clinical practice, and the importance of knowing what…

Standard and experimental forms of the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundations Analytical Reasoning test were administered to 1,496 clients of the Foundation (persons seeking information about aptitude for educational and career decisions). The objectives were to develop a new form of the test and to better understand what makes some items more…