Reviews problems and issues in early childhood evaluation, and discusses advantages and disadvantages associated with using classroom observations. The "Bronson Social and Task Skill Profile" is described, and its usefulness is discussed by reviewing the way it has been used in several research studies. (HTH)

Describes and discusses the biases inherent in human judgment and the difficulty of assessing the many facets of reading. Maintains that educators should be more tentative in the decisions they make based on assessment. (SR)

Continuous discourse tracking, when used as a test of the effectiveness of aural rehabilitation strategies, has numerous uncontrolled variables related to the sender, the receiver, the text materials, and repeated presentations. Tracking is inappropriate for across-subject designs, and acceptable for within-subject test designs only when stringent…

Studies processes in 49 Canadian K-13 classrooms to identify teachers' student achievement evaluation methods. Teacher interviews and categorization of their testing instruments showed teachers beyond early primary grades used evaluations mainly to generate marks for reporting purposes. Such reports seen as reaffirming existing judgments, rather…

Portfolios are collections of selected student work representing an array of performance. This "Consumer Guide" presents information on what has been learned about using portfolios for administrative purposes, the problems involved, and possible solutions to these problems. Student portfolios are being used administratively for…

The purposes of this paper are to analyze some problems in using student test scores to evaluate teachers and to propose an achievement-based model for teacher evaluation that is effective, affordable, fair, legally defensible, and politically acceptable. The system is designed for detecting and documenting poor teacher performance. (Auth/JAZ)

This guide provides advice on effective use of assessments in adult basic and literacy education programs. Chapter 1 considers different types of standardized tests, their purposes, their advantages and limitations, misuses of standardized tests, and other types of assessments. Chapter 2 on informal assessments defines alternative and informal…

Problems with performance assessment (PA) and multiple-choice tests (MCTs) are outlined, with reference to the literature on accountability. PA for individual teachers who should integrate their assessments with their instruction; PA as a supplement to more traditional examinations for licensure decisions; and some limited, experimental tryouts of…