This handbook is intended to assist guidance counselors involved in helping special needs students choose vocational programs. Included in the manual are an overview of 9 special needs populations; position statements of the American School Counseling Association and on rehabilitation and school counselors working together; guidelines for…

The issues of competency testing, standardized testing, and new measures of achievement and competency in college are discussed. Attention is directed to the following questions: what skills and subjects are basic, how can schools enhance and measure competence, and who is responsible for setting higher standards? Considerations of the National…

A field study conducted in the east Jordan Valley (September 1981-August 1983) explored the role of formal education in the maintenance of sex-gender hierarchy and other social heirarchies. Two rural secondary schools were studied, one for boys and one for girls, both attended by members of several different social/ethnic groups who consider…

Criteria for the selection of judges (evaluators) for setting item-based standards involved in tests for which cutting scores must be established are investigated. Focus is on cases in which test standards are based on specialists' judgments concerning the difficulty of test items in tests used to determine who will be awarded a diploma, admitted…

Evaluation and assessment procedures of Ontario, Canada principals and teachers at the Intermediate level (grades 7 and 8) were examined. Extensive questionnaires were returned by 134 principals and 225 teachers divided across the subject areas of English, Mathematics, Science, Languages, History, Home Economics or Shop, Arts, and Physical…

The effects of test content reflecting black or white culture, on the performance of college-bound students of both races was examined. Eighty-five culture-specific items were developed for use in the English Usage and Social Studies Reading subtests of the ACT (American College Testing) Assessment Program. Items were administered as four separate…

A 30-minute screening battery of tests and subtests selected from the complete 90-minute battery used in USOE Prekindergarten-Kindergarten research plus three locally developed instruments were identified as the most satisfactory single measures of cognitive, motor, auditory, visual, visual-motor coordination, and language development to provide…

The factors (variables) examined in the California State Testing Program were divided into two groups for the analyses: (1) the 11 indicators of school quality in terms of the products of the educational system, referred to as output factors (e.g., pupil scores on achievement tests); and (2) the 22 indicators of school quality in terms of the…

This textbook is intended for use in an introductory course in the use of tests in schools and colleges. The book is divided into five parts: (1) history and philosophy--educational measurement, historical perspectives; Measurement and the process of education; (2) classroom test development--what should achievement tests measure?; How should…

Logical predictions about relationships between school aptitude and standardized achievement, aptitude and teachers' grades, and teachers' grades and standardized achievement can be made from the literature. These predictions are that (1) conventional school aptitude measures should predict standardized achievement test scores equally well for…

This publication examines research on the quality of teacher licensing examinations, explaining that state examinations do not necessarily guarantee that teachers have the breadth and depth of subject knowledge to teach all students to high standards. Researchers focused on English/language arts, mathematics, and science, analyzing actual exams…

This book provides a guide for English language arts teachers in grades 6-12, demonstrating how students learn and how beliefs inform behavior. It promotes a student-centered and inquiry-based teaching philosophy. Seven chapters focus on: (1) "Education Begins with Philosophy" (e.g., belief shapes perception, curriculum in traditional and…

This publication (in both English and French versions) on learner assessment in workplace literacy programs begins with a discourse on some dimensions of the testing question. It discusses three major approaches to assessment in the broader area of adult literacy that can shed light in the domain of workplace literacy: traditional, competency…

The rapid increase in the number of limited-English- proficient (LEP) students in U.S. schools is due not only to immigration, but also to the inability of LEP students in existing bilingual and English-as-a-Second-Language programs to meet the criteria for entering the mainstream classroom. In the Dallas public schools, nearly half of all LEP…

This document presents the complete findings, full wordings, complete responses, and sample sizes from a series of surveys conduced from 1998 through 2002. The surveys covered a variety of topics about public education, including student achievement, academic standards, standardized testing, accountability, curriculum, safety and discipline,…