Generalizations about rural youth can be misleading as they are heterogeneous in their backgrounds, cultural heritage, values, and aspirations. This diversity is especially apparent when ethnic subgroups are examined. Black and Hispanic rural youth tend to have lower levels of achievement than white rural youth. This should be kept in mind when…

This publication provides a comprehensive interpretation of the second mathematics assessment completed during the 1977-78 school year by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The NAEP results suggest strong implications for the mathematics curriculum of the 1980's that mathematics educators need to evaluate with care. The…

In discussing the third national assessment of reading and literature, four major points can be made. First, norm-referenced tests and criterion-referenced tests ignore serious ethical and measurement problems, namely, we don't know enough about individual differences to do such testing and the outcome, social class tracking, is ethically…

A response to United States Senator George McGovern's call for congressional legislation to establish an independent national commission on literacy is necessary. Two considerations that must be taken into account by any individual, group, or commission addressing issues of criteria for competency in literacy are: (1) literacy competence is a…

This report summarizes the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress 1977-78 assessment of mathematics. Chapter one provides general information about mathematics assessments and includes discussion of the objectives, samples, exercises, statistics, and background variables of the assessment. Chapter two considers changes in…

THIS BULLETIN PROVIDES CANDIDATES WITH INFORMATION ON THE NATURE AND CONTENT OF THE TESTS, WHERE AND WHEN THEY ARE GIVEN, REGISTRATION PROCEDURES, HOW TO TAKE THE TESTS, AND MEANING AND USES OF TEST SCORES. THE TESTS MEASURE COMPETENCE IN THE AREAS OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION, SPEAKING, READING, WRITING, APPLIED LINGUISTICS, CIVILIZATION AND…

The primary purpose of this project was to develop model evaluation procedures that could be applied to large educational undertakings in Indonesia. Three programs underway in Indonesia were selected for the development of evaluation models: the Textbook-Teacher Upgrading Project, the Development School Project, and the Examinations (Item Bank)…

The aims of the report are threefold: (1) to assess the general level of social studies learning of seventh grade students in California public schools; (2) to provide a comparison of the general level of social studies learning to those of other curriculum areas; and (3) to provide a comparison of the relative level of social studies learning by…

This document represents the second of two volumes presented in "Study of the Impact of the Statewide Systemic Initiatives Program" (Norman L. Webb and Iris R. Weiss). In an effort to evaluate the impact of the Statewide Systemic Initiatives (SSIs) on student achievement and the lessons that could be learned from the National Science Foundation's…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1998 Civics Assessment found that 12th-graders who participated in volunteer service had higher scores than those who did not. Furthermore, 12th-graders who worked 6 to 15 hours a week had higher scores than those who either worked longer hours or did not work at all. (Contains two tables and…

This May 2004 issue of "Outlook," a monthly publication published by the Council for American Private Education (CAPE), describes the findings of the 2000 High School Transcript Study (HSTS), which examined the transcripts of 19,747 public school students and 1,184 private school students in order to provide a comprehensive look at the high school…

The paper initially describes the sources of uncertainty in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data and standard errors. As NAEP sample sizes have increased, greater precision has been attained by the program. For this reason, exclusion effects are increasingly important. Two scenarios of revised NAEP results are presented (for New…

This document presents highlights from the 1996 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Science Assessment for grades 4, 8, and 12. This is the premier issue of a series aimed at bringing these test results to a broader audience. Results are presented through easy-to-understand graphs and examples of test questions with student answers.…

The President and the Department of Education have advocated national testing, but they have not really justified their use. Most educators argue for the importance of multiple assessments, rather than a single test of achievement with great impact on the future of a student and an educational system. Misuses of test results would plague national…

This study compared the performance of English language learners and native speakers of English on mathematics word problems from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests and investigated whether modifying the linguistic structures in the test items affected student test performance. The study began with the analysis of…