An educational assessment embodies an argument from a handful of observations of what students say, do or make in a handful of particular circumstances, to what they know or can do in what kinds of situations more broadly. This article discusses ways in which research into the nature and development of expertise can help assessment designers…

A culture of testing permeates schools. Many teachers cannot separate instruction/instructional improvement from outcome measures designed for accountability. The article discusses the effects of standardized testing and examines a study of teachers' beliefs and practices concerning reading comprehension instruction that indicates accountability…

In an effort to assess community college students' knowledge of the liberal arts, the Center for the Study of Community Colleges developed and field-tested a student survey and General Academic Assessment (GAA) instrument. The GAA was completed by a sample of 8,024 students at four large, urban community college districts. The scores were cross…

Proposals currently being debated for a reform of the examination system at 18+ in England and Wales, and comments on the proposals, are presented to aid in future planning of language courses in Northern Ireland. The context in which the new proposals arose is briefly examined. The following three standard course proposals are diagrammed for…

In this technical report, the authors describe the development alternate forms of Word and Passage Reading Fluency measures as part of a comprehensive progress monitoring literacy assessment system developed in 2006 for use with students in Kindergarten through fourth grade. They begin with a brief overview of the two conceptual frameworks…

This paper details the development of the high school general mathematics examination and reading comprehension tests for grades one through eight for the curriculum referenced testing program in Charleston County School District, South Carolina. While the basic developmental approach was similar, problems encountered in developing the two types…

The third-party evaluation of the second year of the Iowa Central Community College Experience Based Career Education (EBCE) Project was based on examination of project records, interviews with project staff, student and resource persons, questionnaires completed by students, parents and resource persons, and test data collected on students at the…

Results of the New Jersey College Basic Skills Placement Test are presented for fall 1984 entering freshmen. The test consists of an essay and four multiple choice sections: reading comprehension, sentence sense, computation, and elementary algebra. New forms of the test are developed each year. A total of 46,465 freshmen at 30 public colleges and…