Performance of 156 undergraduate and 48 graduate students on a self-adapted test (SFAT)--students choose the difficulty level of their test items--was compared with performance on a computer-adapted test (CAT). Those taking the SFAT obtained higher ability scores and reported lower posttest state anxiety than did CAT takers. (SLD)

An age-dependent answer-selection sequence of answers on multiple-choice tests suggested by previous studies was supported using statistical rather than clinical means. Results with 2,810 students aged 88 months through 241 months given a reading comprehension test twice during a 5-month interval support the systematically connected age-dependent…

Business should participate in school reform but has too narrow a perspective to guide it. Nationalizing education through comparative testing is a move to cut spending for social services, to increase accountability and efficiency without increasing financial responsibility or equity. Imposing private-sector rules on public education undermines…

The Enhanced American College Test (ACT) and the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) are the two primary college admission test batteries administered in Nevada. This report provides an overview of the two examinations and major trends pertinent to Nevada in 1991. These tests apply to only a portion of the high school student population, and are not…

This study assessed whether or not classroom-based micro-computer applications can help improve students' performance on standardized tests, and which subject areas such programs are most effective in for fourth graders in two Mississippi schools. The Teaching and Learning with Computers (TLC) program placed a local area network in the school with…

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…

Detailed evidence is presented about the extent of generalization from high-stakes tests to other tests and about the instructional effects of high-stakes testing. Data are from grade 3 of a large, high-poverty urban district with large numbers of Black and Hispanic American students. The district's results in 1990 for two tests, designated Test B…

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…

Whether or not working with more realistic and lengthier problems during instruction would make students better able to solve similar problems on achievement tests was studied for 82 seventh graders (50 in the experimental condition and 32 in the control condition) in general mathematics classes at an urban middle school. The study also…

A preliminary investigation was conducted of the construct validity of the Inventory of Classroom Management Style (ICMS), a scale to measure differences in perceptions of classroom management style. The main objective was to determine if the scale reflects differences between novice and experienced teachers. Classroom management is defined as a…

Beliefs about the causes of success and failure in academic achievement were compared for students in the United States and Israel. The following 11 attributions were placed randomly in a questionnaire format: (1) mood; (2) skill; (3) knowledge; (4) chance; (5) effort; (6) competence; (7) help; (8) ability; (9) task; (10) bias; and (11) luck. Each…

In the spring of 1988, Massachusetts conducted its second Educational Assessment Program to assess the performance of students in grades 4, 8, and 12 in reading, mathematics, science, and social studies. Students' responses to open-ended questions in one form of the reading test were studied. One-twelfth of the fourth-graders, one-sixteenth of the…

As a measure of musical aptitude, a new 90-item Pitch Discrimination Test was developed, and its internal structure was examined. Each of the three sections of the test measures an individual's aptitude for pitch discrimination in a different frequency range using square-wave tones generated by a personal computer. A total of 1,303 examinees,…

Use of item response theory (IRT), the delta plot method, and Mantel-Haenszel techniques to assess differential item functioning (DIF) across racial and gender groups associated with the Maryland Test of Citizenship Skills (MTCS) is described. The objective of this research was to determine the: effect of sample size on results from these three…

The objective of this study was to investigate differential tendencies to avoid guessing as a function of three variables: (1) lingual-cultural-group; (2) gender; and (3) examination year. The Psychometric Entrance Test (PET) for universities in Israel was used, which is administered in Hebrew, Arabic, English, French, Spanish, and Russian. The…