In recent years, increasing numbers of professional development programs have dealt with assessment literacy for teachers and/or administrators. Is assessment literacy merely a fashionable focus for today's professional developers or, in contrast, should it be regarded as a significant area of professional development interest for many years to…

Six deficits of this model are discussed: disparity in proponent prowess, fallible arbiters, excessive confidence in the model's potency, difficulties in framing the proposition in a manner amenable to adversary resolution, "a cat's-paw for biased decision makers," and, excessive costs. (Author/JM)

A strategy to encourage evaluation used by the Centers for Disease Control in the Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) is described. DASH personnel tried to make evaluation of human immunodeficiency virus education programs more attractive by providing materials and models for evaluation. (SLD)

Contends that educational reform strategies that feature measurement-driven instruction as their centerpiece are often maligned as "quick fixes." Although asserting that measurement-driven instruction has potential benefits, notes that assessment experts should share their knowledge with policymakers to avoid ineffective strategies. (Author/NB)

This study investigates the improvement in research and development skills which resulted from the 1968 AERA Presession. Instructional materials were administered to 47 participants who were pretested and posttested to assess their improvement. The results of the presession are considered favorable. (HW)

This program is designed to train individuals to develop and evaluate educational products by means of a consortium composed of agencies and individuals in Southern California with expertise in one or more aspect of product development and product evaluation. The trainees would include degree and non-degree candidates, and the program would…

Teacher educators have been plagued with the problem of devising useful instructional interventions, but often have been unable to assess the quality of their efforts because of the unavailability of satisfactory criterion measures. The application of teaching performance tests as (1) an instructional intervention, and as (2) a formative or…

Many participant-satisfaction evaluation forms used in staff development programs are ritualistic contrivances that are poorly designed and administered. This article describes five rules for generating evaluation forms based on clarity, a decision focus, brevity, anonymity, and respondents' opportunity to make additional suggestions. Careful…

Fewer competencies should be used as the organizing structure for teacher education programs, since all relevant topics cannot be covered thoroughly anyway. One variant of an outcomes-focused approach to teacher education is an objectives-oriented strategy. The criterion is not what the teacher does but what happens to pupils as a consequence of…

In recognition of the reduction in the number of educational evaluators functioning in the nation's schools, it is argued that educational evaluation must be promoted because of its direct and personal benefit to the individuals who authorize such evaluations. An argument is presented to use with authorizers of evaluation studies. (Author/SLD)

Assessment for learning involves the frequent, continual use of both formal and informal classroom assessments. It can be as simple as requiring students to respond to a lesson-embedded, one-item quiz as a way of gauging student understanding of what is being taught. Ideally, this innovative approach to classroom assessment is based on a careful…

Because of misconceptions regarding appropriate measurement strategies, it is necessary to draw distinctions between two major measurement methodologies, norm-referenced and criterion-referenced measurement, as they relate to determining basic academic capabilities. Norm-referenced measures are used to ascertain an individual's performance in…