The performance of 42 hearing-impaired children and 42 matched hearing peers was examined on the Category, Tactual Performance, and Trail Making tests of the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery for Older Children. The major finding was that performance of deaf students was similar to that of hearing controls. (SLD)

Although the application of the balanced scorecard (BSC) in the business sector is well documented, very little research has been reported regarding the adaptation or application of the BSC in the education sector. In this article, the authors (a) describe how the Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence has adapted the concept of…

Since the early 1980s, policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) have shown unprecedented interest in the setting and evaluating of educational standards and in improving assessment procedures. This book is the outcome of a study undertaken by the OECD in…

College of Liberal Arts courses in which Martin Luther King Program (MLK) students registered from 1970 to 1972 were studied to explore the relationship of course characteristics to differences in performance between MLK and non-MLK students. Courses in which 15 or more MLK students received A through F grades were selected and divided into two…

Explores issues involved in using assessments to define standards and encourage efforts to meet them and compares the European examination system with the American testing system. Also considered are issues of the definition of learning domains in ways that do not encourage narrowly focused training on specific assessment items. (SLD)

As constructed-response items become an integral part of educational assessments, setting student performance standards on constructed-response items has become an important issue. Two standard-setting methods, one used for setting standards on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in reading in grade 8 and the other used to set…

Three critical procedural skills in emergency medicine were evaluated using three assessment modalities--written, computer, and animal model. The effects of computer practice and previous procedure experience on skill competence were also examined in an experimental sequential assessment design. Subjects were six medical students, six residents,…

This paper offers an alternative ranking of top American research universities, criticizing the methodology used by US News & World Report and its commercialization. It begins by questioning two "givens"--the American pursuit of the "best" and the rankings "game" of trying to define the best colleges and…

Use of performance gaps analysis in program evaluation is examined by analyzing and critiquing the gap reduction design as an experimental design and an analytic tool in program outcome evaluation. The example of the Bilingual Education Evaluation System illustrates the contention that disadvantages of the method outweigh its contributions. (SLD)

Uses handwriting samples of 12 undergraduates to explore whether teachers give higher marks to students' work in good handwriting and whether the students' gender may be surmised by their handwriting. Results show grading is not influenced by handwriting quality and finds no effect of gender attribution on grades assigned. (NL)

This paper is a report of a study that investigated whether increased private-school competition results in enhanced performance of public schools. Data for the study came from a pooled data set from Georgia Department of Education documents and directories, which included socioeconomic data on students and test scores from Georgia school systems…

Two approaches--Harnisch/Linn and Rasch-based--to comparing district-level student performance to system-level student performance were examined, using results for 3,607 students on a curriculum-referenced mathematics test. Both approaches addressed relative mean performance on categories of common items. A modification of one approach and an…

This guide describes the New York State assessment process as a framework for other districts aiming to develop an effective approach to performance assessment. In 1984-85 the New York State Board of Regents initiated the Comprehensive Assessment Report (CAR) as a process of reporting and using education results throughout the state. The…

A driver education project tested the hypothesis that measurable improvements in fleet fuel economy can be achieved by driver awareness training in fuel-efficient driving techniques and by a manifold vacuum gauge, used individually or in combination with each other. From April 1976 through December 1977 data were collected in the Las Vegas,…

The model of feedback processing proposed by R. W. Kulhavy and W. A. Stock (1989) was studied in a traditional classroom setting in which methods of assessing students' response confidence as predictors of postfeedback performance were also examined. The relationship between confidence ratings at the time of the test and confidence assessed prior…