The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation has commissioned studies of state academic standards in five core subjects. This is the fourth of these studies, focusing on state standards for mathematics. For this evaluation of mathematics standards, researchers developed nine criteria under the four areas of: clarity, content, reason, and negative qualities.…

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation has commissioned studies of state academic standards in five core subjects. This is the third of these studies, concentrating on geography, the core subject that has been the most neglected in the U.S. academic curriculum. Standards documents were solicited from all the states, and were submitted by 38 states and…

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation has commissioned studies of state academic standards in five core subjects. This is the second of these studies, focusing on standards for history. After the controversy surrounding the proposed "national history standards" in 1994, history has become a subject with no generally accepted national standards.…

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation has commissioned studies of state academic standards in five core subjects. This is the fifth of these studies, focusing on state standards for science. Thirty-six states presented standards for evaluation. Some states were in the process of revising standards, while others simply had no standards to present.…

A historic change is taking place in American education with the development of voluntary national standards that will identify what all students should know and be able to do in order to live and work in the twenty-first century. Content standards will define what students should know and be able to do, and performance standards will identify the…

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has contracted with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research to develop and field test performance assessments in mathematics, language arts, and science. Together with a Wisconsin-developed knowledge and concepts test, the new performance assessments will provide important information about the…

The New Hampshire State Department of Education in conjunction with the state board and the Legislature, has implemented a new statewide educational improvement and assessment program. The purpose of the program is "to establish what New Hampshire students should know and be able to do and to develop and implement effective methods for…

This report, second in a series, contains school and district level data on student performance at the end of the primary grades. It provides a source of information to evaluate current school improvement efforts and facilitate decisions about curriculum, instruction, professional development, resource allocation, and staffing. The statewide…

This report displays summary results from the Wisconsin Student Assessment System 1994-95 Eighth Grade Knowledge and Concepts Examinations for all Wisconsin school districts and schools with an eighth grade. Statewide data for 57,388 of Wisconsin's 58,821 eighth graders are reported; certain categories, such as limited English speaking students,…

Alternatives for testing the achievement of college students in Maryland are reviewed by committee members appointed by the State Board for Higher Education and Maryland's public institutions of higher education. The achievement testing alternatives would be a means of assessing institutional effectiveness; all entail the use of tests currently in…

This publication presents performance data and the concomitant standards of performance that form the basis of school improvement in Maryland. The Data-Based Areas section of this report describes essential tools for measuring how well schools, school systems, and the state are preparing every student for higher education and successful careers…

In the spring of 1988, the Massachusetts Department of Education administered its second biennial assessment (the Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program), testing students in grades 4, 8, and 12 in reading, mathematics, science, and social studies. This report discusses the use of open-ended questions in one form of the science tests.…

The Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) was established in 1985 to compare academic achievement among schools and districts and to give curriculum and instructional guidance. Biennially, it tests all students in grades 4, 8, and 12 in reading, mathematics, science, and social studies. Using a matrix sampling design, each student…

This volume represents the work of the Mid-continent Regional Education Laboratory (McREL) in surveying and consolidating the national and state efforts to identify what students in kindergarten through grade 12 should know and be able to do in a variety of subject areas. McREL researchers consulted 116 national and state documents that address…

All second- and third-grade students in California public schools were tested in reading achievement, and all sixth and twelfth grade students were tested in reading, written expression, spelling, and mathematics. Second- and third-grade achievement gains were reported on the California Reading Assessment Program Reading Test over an eleven-year…