The New Mexico High School Proficiency Examination (NMHSPE) assesses the extent to which New Mexico students have mastered the skills and knowledge specified on the New Mexico Basic Skills Plan. The test includes an objective portion and a writing assessment. A student passing both sections receives a diploma endorsement from the State Department…

To evaluate the writing skills of Colorado students under the Educational Quality Act of 1985 (commonly known as the 2 + 2 project), a study administered writing tasks to a statewide sample of third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh grade students in the spring of 1987. A narrative or story-telling writing task was administered to 2,000 grade 3 students…

A mathematics program was developed and implemented at the Jefferson County (Ohio) Joint Vocational School to raise the mathematics functioning of special needs students by using interactive computers. Special needs students were pre- and posttested with the Wide Range Achievement Test, Arithmetic section. The 11th-grade students functioning at…

The Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) Grade 11 Test is designed to measure proficiency in four subject areas including English, mathematics, social studies, and science. This guide for science is intended to provide a description of the way in which specific skill areas are assessed on the LEAP test and instructional considerations…

This paper describes the characterization of a student's framework of heat and temperature, and the development of a microcomputer-based laboratories (MBL) intervention program for grade 9 and grade ll students. The report presents the results of classroom study, including interview questions and answers and pretest/posttest, from experimental and…

This guide is intended for use in teaching a course in electronic communications systems. Class activities during the course examine the processes of creating electronic signals and transmitting various coded messages to other locations. Methods of changing the form of electric current are emphasized, and the latest techniques in data processing…

This guide is intended for use in teaching an introductory course in manufacturing materials and processes. The course centers around four basic materials--metallics, polymers, ceramics, and composites--and seven manufacturing processes--casting, forming, molding, separating, conditioning, assembling, and finishing. Concepts and classifications of…

This guide is intended for use in teaching a course in the sequential tasks that change a designer's idea into a completed product. Emphasis is placed on the design of a product and the manufacturing system needed to produce it. The first two sections discuss the guide's development within the framework of North Carolina's efforts to improve…

This guide is intended for use in teaching a course in the history of the development of transportation systems and the individual elements in such systems. The course is designed to break transportation systems down into their individual components so as to make it possible to study system types, media, technical elements, and environmental…

Given that very little is known about the kinds of writing experiences students have in content areas beyond writing for evaluative purpose, a study investigated how writing tasks interact with learning and also how the instructional context in which writing is embedded influences what students contribute to and take from writing. The effects of…

Reading test data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were scaled using the unidimensional item response theory model. Data were collected for students aged 9, 13, and 17. To determine whether the responses to the reading items were consistent with unidimensionality, four different methods were applied: (1) principal…

Using the High School and Beyond 1980 to 1982 Longitudinal Study data base, this paper focuses on cognitive growth as evidenced by changing scores on achievement tests of adolescents during their last two years of high school. The analysis had two major phases: (1) a descriptive analysis which provided a variety of cross tabulations of change in…

A year-long study designed to create a high school English course entitled "Guided Literature" is described in this report. The described course was intended to provide literature instruction for nonmotivated poor readers at the eleventh and twelfth grade levels, and was structured so that students could read materials they found…

Five students from a Boston high school and 35 from Lincoln-Sudbury took part in an alternate semester consisting of 5 units: Outward Bound, environmental issues, urban, rural, and river/building. Students had to be juniors or seniors, have parental permission, and meet graduation requirements. The alternate semester began with Outward Bound, a…

In the third year of Lincoln-Sudbury's Alternate Semester program, 22 students participated, with 2 teachers sharing responsibilities in a new program format: a fall planning unit; a 10-day stay in Grafton, Vermont; a 15-week period spent alone or in small groups, working and living in urban and/or rural settings for modules of time dictated by…