Most experts in the testing community have presumed that the $350 million promised by the U.S. Department of Education to support common assessments would promote those that made greater use of open-ended items capable of measuring higher-order critical-thinking skills. But as measurement experts consider the multitude of possibilities for an…

This plan presents the procedures to be followed in the administration of the Florida College-Level Academic Skills Test (CLAST) for the 1994-95 academic year. The document specifies the responsibilities of the Department of Education, the technical support contractor, and individual institutions. The plan does not include procedures needed in…

The second section of a four-part technical report of Florida's statewide program for assessing reading-related skills in grades 2 and 4 provides statistical and scoring information. Item and student sampling, a test re-scoring study, reporting statewide assessment data (percentage of achievement, types of tables used), and standard error…

Technical problems involved in obtaining scores for essays written by teacher candidates are addressed. The rating procedure assures that each essay is read by three raters specially trained for the task. Ratings range from "1" for incompetent or unacceptable to "4" for outstanding. The score assigned to each essay will be the…

This document contains sample test items from the Florida College-Level Academic Skills Test (CLAST), an achievement test that measures communication and computation skills that students should have acquired on completing their sophomore year in college. The sample items in this document test the set of skills that were revised in September 1990…