In 1990, a study was conducted to compare the College Level Academic Skills Test (CLAST) passing rates of St. Petersburg Junior College (SPJC) students with those of other Florida community college students and students from state universities. The SPJC samples consisted of 756 students who took the CLAST for the first time in October 1989 and…

Survey responses from 517 member institutions of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education are reported. The first section depicts the nature of the institutions (public land grant, public non-land grant, independent liberal arts, church-related liberal arts, private university, and predominantly black), and the patterns of…

The three articles in this journal issue focus on the real meaning of competency in reading and writing. The first article, "Minimums and Optimums," argues against the establishment of minimum competency tests and for an increase in instructional time. "Placement Testing: The Objective Irrelevant," the second article, maintains that the…

The seven articles in this journal issue deal with the politics and practice of teaching writing. The articles focus on the following topics: (1) efforts to establish educational accountability, including competency based teacher education, licensing of teachers, and minimum competency testing; (2) methods for teaching students to use intuition in…

The forces or pressures that have produced a concern for fundamental skills of literacy are briefly considered, and a number of related questions are raised about willingness and capabilities for dealing with the issues in a deliberative, systematic manner. A major premise is the belief that the back-to-basics movement can be understood best in…

A major provision of the South Carolina Education Improvement Act of 1984 established the requirement for a high school exit examination (HSEE) for all 10th-grade students. Passage of the HSEE is a condition for the receipt of a state high school diploma. The HSEE is an outgrowth of the South Carolina Basic Skills Assessment Program, which…

A one-page introduction is followed by summaries of articles and documents on teacher competency testing. George F. Madaus argues that, although tests serve some useful functions, treating them as a major mechanism for reforming education is questionable. Peter A. Garcia examines the negative impact of testing on minority teachers and minorities…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 20 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: predictors of primary grade reading achievement; factor analysis of the WISC-R to distinguish disabled readers at three grade levels; a process model for…

Abstracts are presented of the major conference papers and thematic discussions delivered at the 1978 Measurement and Methodology Conference. The titles of the presentations are: Policy-Responsive Evaluation (Wiley); When Educators Set Standards (Glass); Comments on Wiley and Glass (Schutz); Key Standard-Setting Considerations for Minimal…

This conference was organized around four policy concerns: (1) the needs of handicapped, gifted, and bilingual students; (2) the use of test results to allocate federal compensatory education funds; (3) the validity of minimum competency testing; and (4) the demand for increasingly sophisticated evaluations. Garry L. McDaniels discussed the…

This newsletter reports on the activities of Equipped for the Future (EFF), which is a National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) initiative that develops content standards to ensure that every adult can gain the knowledge and skills needed to fulfill real-world responsibilities as workers, parents, and citizens. A message from the NIFL…