The Florida legislature recently mandated several testing programs to improve the quality of teacher education entrants, students, and graduates. These requirements and their impact on teacher education in Florida are discussed. (MT)

This bulletin contains the specifications for the Professional Education subtest of the Florida Teacher Certification Examination. The specifications presented are being used for the 1980-81 examinations. General information on the test includes an outline of the content base, a content base/competency matrix, and a blueprint of the test by…

Prospective teachers in many states must pass a competency test prior to receiving an initial teaching certificate. Because of the high stakes associated with them, educator competency tests can play a major role in modifying the nature of teacher training programs. To investigate the nature and extent of such changes, deans and faculty at teacher…

The efforts of researchers to produce a pool of approximately 30 validated and field-tested topics for use in future administrations of the Florida Teacher Certification Examination in writing are reviewed in this paper. Various sections of the paper (1) describe the procedures followed; (2) explain the reasons for making certain important…

This bulletin contains the specifications for the reading, writing, and mathematics subtests of the Florida Teacher Certification Examination. The reading test uses the multiple-choice Cloze procedure and consists of ten passages of approximately 100 words selected from textbooks, journals, documents for teachers produced by the State Department…

This bulletin provides information about the Florida Teacher Certification Examination. It describes the development of the examination and presents the specifications for each of the subtests. Competencies and subskills are tested in the areas of reading, writing, mathematics, and professional education. The tentative examination schedule is…

The hypothesis that role-playing scenarios specifying full rhetorical contexts were a superior means of eliciting valid writing samples for the purpose of assessing compositional skills of prospective Florida teachers was tested. In addition, topics for use on the initial administrations of the Florida Teacher Competency Examination's writing…

Argues that the Florida Teacher Certification Examination is culturally, linguistically, and philosophically biased against minorities. Suggested alternatives to testing are implementation of knowledge about effective schools, teacher workshops on effective techniques and attitudes for teaching nonachievers, and improved early education. (CMG)

This manual is designed as a guide for the initial training of raters and referees in holistic evaluation of writing samples. It is intended for use by a single trainer in a group of twelve (nine raters, three referees) trainees. The manual is divided into sections corresponding to the procedures to be used in the training sessions. The left hand…

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…

Testing programs enacted by the state legislature are changing and improving Florida's educational system in five areas: (1) setting standards for students; (2) making schools more accountable; (3) creating growth through competiton; (4) evaluating educational programs; and (5) assuring the competency of educators. (BS)

A procedure which employs a method of item substitution based on item difficulty is recommended for developing parallel criterion referenced test forms. This procedure is currently being used in the Florida functional literacy testing program and the Georgia teacher certification testing program. Reasons for developing parallel test forms involve…

The writing examination package is divided into three volumes: Examination Handbook (present volume), Training Manual, and a Ratings Manual. The volumes are interdependent, and all three must be understood before using the Training Manual to train raters. The Examination Handbook provides a context for the other two volumes. It gives a general…