The Connecticut Mastery Test testing program assesses essential skills in mathematics and language arts, including listening, reading, and writing, for grades 4, 6, and 8. For grade 8, student achievement is measured and reported in relation to specific learning objectives (criterion-referenced) that students can reasonably be expected to have…

This document consists of a student resource book entitled "CAAP in Action: The Environment" and an instructor guide entitled "CAAP in Action". CAAP is a program developed by the Close Up Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan civic education organizations, in cooperation with the National Association of Elementary School…

To fulfill the mandates of the State Legislature, a battery of national and statewide standardized norm-referenced tests has been administered in the spring of each year to North Carolina's students in grades 3, 6, and 8 to measure skills in reading, language, mathematics, science, and social studies. This report presents summary results of…

In response to the changes in curriculum as a result of educational reform and the introduction of information technologies into school library media centers, media specialists need to ensure that all students acquire the skills needed to manage information. This study sought to determine what assistance methods eighth-grade students would use to…

This curriculum guide, the fourth in a set of six, contains teacher and student materials for a unit on mechanical engineering prepared as part of a seventh- and eighth-grade agricultural science curriculum that is integrated with science instruction. The guide contains the state goals and sample learning objectives for each goal for students in…

The purpose of this practicum was to effect a substantial improvement in the academic and social profiles of 12 seventh-grade and 6 eighth-grade students with specific learning disabilities who had been targeted as potentially high risk candidates for dropping out of high school. Within a holistically based intervention model, five student…

Potential gender-related differences in the process of mathematical word problem solving were investigated. Sixth and eighth graders (n=302) solved 2-step mathematical word problems using a 9-step problem solving plan. The nine steps were: (1) identify the facts; (2) identify the question; (3) draw a diagram; (4) choose the operations; (5) write…

This curriculum, directed primarily to students in grades seven and eight, is a five-week sexuality education program designed to promote sexual abstinence as the best decision young people can make for themselves. The guide is divided into three general areas of emphasis. These sections are divided into six units that focus the content of the…

The 1993 Illinois Goal Assessment Program (IGAP) Reading Tests measured reading comprehension using both narrative and expository reading passages. Noticeable differences in mean scaled scores occurred depending on whether the 1993 results were equated back to the 1992 narrative test or the 1993 expository test (Hsu and Ackerman, 1994). In an…

Statewide information concerning the Connecticut eight-grade public school students who particpated in the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) in the spring of 1988 is presented. Over 900 students in 46 schools in 35 school districts, almost evenly divided between males and females, completed cognitive tests and student surveys about…

The Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) was established in 1985 to compare academic achievement among schools and districts and to give curriculum and instructional guidance. Biennially, it tests all students in grades 4, 8, and 12 in reading, mathematics, science, and social studies. Using a matrix sampling design, each student…

An attempt to add substance to history, the curriculum guide for grades 7-8 presents in 12 culture guides information on American Indians for teachers to use as supplement materials to social studies texts. Each culture guide is accompanied with a teacher guide offering activities or discussion/quiz questions. Topics of culture guides encompass…

Intended for use as a resource in the planning and delivery of career education, this guide contains instructional activities for grades 6, 7, and 8. Materials are divided into the three grade levels. Each section begins with a listing of career education objectives and behaviors. Learning activities are provided that correspond to the behaviors…

The e-rater® system has been used by ETS for automated essay scoring since 1999. This paper describes a new version of e-rater (v.2.0) that differs from the previous one (v.1.3) with regard to the feature set and model building approach. The paper describes the new version, compares the new and previous versions in terms of performance, and…

For the first time, Asian and Pacific-Islander (API) eighth-grade students taking part in the California Assessment Program (CAP) were identified as belonging to one of the following 10 API ethnic groups: Asian-Indian, Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Hmong, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Pacific-Islander, and Vietnamese. In school districts associated…