This technical manual provides information about the technical characteristics of the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System (KIRIS), the assessment component of the Kentucky Education Reform Act Accountability System. The time period covered is Accountability Cycle 2, which spanned the school years 1992-93 through 1995-96. Sections of…

This report provides teachers, school administrators, students, and the general public with a summarized overview of results from the January 1997 administration of the Social Studies 33 Diploma Examination. The summary is divided into: (1) description of the examination; (2) achievement of standards; (3) provincial averages; (4) multiple-choice…

Some problems associated with the criteria of reproducibility and scalability as they are used in Guttman scalogram analysis to evaluate cumulative, nonparametric scales of dichotomous items are discussed. A computer program is presented which analyzes response patterns elicited by dichotomous scales designed to be cumulative. (Author/DWH)

In April 2007, Federal No Child Left Behind regulations were finalized that provided states with additional flexibility for assessing some students with disabilities. The regulations allowed states to offer another assessment option, alternate assessments based on modified academic achievement standards (AA-MAS). States are not required to have…

This report, submitted to the U.S. Department of Education, contains summary details of Delaware students' growth in the areas of reading, mathematics, writing, science and social studies. The results reported herein are part of a long-term effort to gather data on Delaware students' educational progress and use the data to inform decisions about…

Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) "Special Education at a Glance," which includes a copy of the "Guide to Planning and Assessing School-Based Special Education Programs," provides in a single document, information about the special education population at each Montgomery County (Maryland) public school, including…

We developed equivalent, alternate forms of easyCBM[R] in reading (n=20 forms) and mathematics (n=13 forms) with different skills reflective of the National Reading Panel (NRP) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), respectively. We then took three forms to use as screening measures in the fall, winter, and spring so educators…

The primary purpose of the 1983 Statewide Testing Program was to assess the achievement of 4th, 7th, and 10th grade students in South Carolina public schools. The results from the Statewide Testing Program provide educators with information which facilitates the decision-making process at the State, district, and school levels. Besides the…

This report is designed to provide numerical data about student performance on the curriculum of the Boston (Massachusetts) Public Schools (BPS) as measured by curriculum referenced tests (CRTs). BPS Department of Educational Testing analyzed data from the 1986 CRT final exams in: reading and language arts (grades K-8), high school English (six…

Conventional mastery tests designed to make optimal mastery classifications were compared with fixed-length and variable-length adaptive mastery tests. Comparisons between the testing procedures were made across five content areas in an introductory biology course from tests administered to volunteers. The criterion was the student's standing in…

The practice of analyzing all available project children in as large a group as possible is considered not to be justifiable when distinct subgroups of pupils are represented. Instead, the approach suggested here determines the test score gain a pupil achieves from the beginning to the end of the year, with all of the pupil gain scores of a single…

Current testing standards call for test developers to provide evidence that testing procedures and test scores, and the inferences made based on the test scores, show evidence of validity and are comparable across subpopulations (American Educational Research Association [AERA], American Psychological Association [APA], & National Council on…

The Teacher Follow-up Survey (TFS) is sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education and is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. TFS is a follow-up survey of selected elementary and secondary school teachers who participated in the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). SASS is the…

This report describes the design and results of an experiment to test whether a $10.00 payment to participate in the national Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (HANES) would significantly increase the response rate for the survey. The design and findings of the study, as well as a comparison of response rates prior to and following…

The G index is a measure of the similarity between individuals over dichotomous items. Some tests for the G-index are described. For each case an example is included. (Author/GK)