The validity of the multiple-choice Sequential Tests of Educational Progress (STEP) Writing Test (1957) was tested by the University of Chicago Center for the Cooperative Study of Instruction. Seven criteria developed by the center to score essay assignments were used to determine the relationship between STEP and actual writing behavior. Of the…

A social studies achievement test made up of items rewritten in simplified language was compared with a test containing the same items in their original form by administering the two tests to the entire 8th grade class of a suburban junior high school near Baltimore. The results showed only slightly higher scores for students taking the simplified…

This study hypothesized that items in the one-question-per-passage format would be less easily answered when administered without their associated contexts than conventional reading comprehension items. A total of 256 seventh and eighth grade students were administered both Forms 3A and 3B of the Sequential Tests of Educational Progress (STEP 11).…