In this report we provide preliminary evidence on the measurement characteristics for a new type of teaching performance assessment designed to be combined with complementary assessments of teacher content knowledge. The resulting test, which we refer to as the Foundational Assessment of Competencies for Teaching (FACT), is designed for use as…

This article documents the adaptation, piloting and validation of a measure of teachers' ethical sensitivity. To create the test, we modified a measure from dentistry drawing on literature in teacher professional ethics and drew on the expertise of professional ethics scholars and practitioners. Based on the results of Rasch analysis combined with…

There is a growing consensus that teacher evaluation in the United States is fundamentally broken. Few would argue that a system that tells 98 percent of teachers they are "satisfactory" benefits anyone--including teachers. The nation's collective failure to invest in high-quality professional feedback to teachers is inconsistent with…

Research has long been clear that teachers matter more to student learning than any other in-school factor. Improving the quality of teaching is critical to student success. Yet only recently have many states and districts begun to take seriously the importance of evaluating teacher performance and providing teachers with the feedback they need to…

Noncognitive attributes as the researchers have measured them do correlate with college GPA, but the incremental validity associated with these measures is relatively small. The noncognitive measures are correlated with other valued dimensions of student performance beyond the achievement reflected in college grades. There were much smaller…

The Student Evaluation of Teacher II (SET II), the new instrument presented in this manual, is designed for use in securing student evaluations of teachers below the fourth grade or, with disadvantaged students, through the sixth grade. The manual describes the history, nature, and difficulties of the student evaluation of teachers movement and…

The development and validation of a Portuguese oral language test are described. The test consisted of five item types: personal conversation, giving directions, description of picture sequences, topical discourse, and oral task completion based on printed instructions. Three preliminary forms of the test were administered to a group of language…

The School Subjects Attitude Scales is an instrument for measuring students' attitudes toward school subjects for grades 5-12. Twenty-four bipolar word pairs are used with evaluation, usefulness, and difficulty scales. The word pairs were selected on the basis of discussions and analysis of trial forms. Results can be used in program evaluation…

Presents globally oriented scoring sheet, reference guide, and rating scale for facilitating clinical hypotheses from children's Kinetic School Drawings (KSDs) and further empirical evaluations of KSD technique. Provides information on instrument construction and preliminary findings in terms of procedures' reliability and discriminant validity.…

A student questionnaire is presented that is designed to measure attitudes toward school, with subscales for attitudes towards self, other students, teachers, the principal, and the school in general: The Battle Student Attitude Scale. Attitudes are discussed briefly, telling what they are, how they develop, and what effect they may have on…

This study reports a preliminary investigation into the relationship of different subsets of student attitudes toward economics. A 49-item attitude form was developed with six subscales representing distinct aspects of attitudes toward economics: (1) satisfaction with current grasp of economics; (2) capability for understanding economics; (3)…

The Problem Solving in Technology-Rich Environments (TRE) study was designed to demonstrate and explore innovative use of computers for developing, administering, scoring, and analyzing the results of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments. Two scenarios (Search and Simulation) were created for measuring problem solving…

In 1990, a study was conducted at Rio Hondo College (Whittier, California) to determine if readers exhibited any bias in scoring test papers that were composed on a word processor as opposed to being written by hand. The study began with the formulation of tentative pilot study questions and the development of procedures to address them. Three…

The Profile of Real/Ideal Scholastic Motivation (PRISM) self-report instrument is included in the user's manual. PRISM is a set of 30 postulates which measures attitudes in an educational setting (i.e., educational self-theory). The instrument has a closed response format chosen on the grounds of reliability, validity, and reactivity. It is scaled…

The Career Beliefs Inventory (CBI) is a counseling tool with the purpose of identifying beliefs as they relate to occupational choice and the pursuit of a career. The inventory can be administered individually or to a group ranging in age from grade 8 to adult. The CBI is a 96-item paper-and-pencil test written at an eighth-grade reading level.…