Although it is widely agreed that there is no universally accepted definition for school climate, most professionals ground it in shared beliefs, values, and attitudes reflecting the quality and character of life in schools. In this article, we review and analyze measures accessible to school personnel charged with documenting and monitoring…

The testing effect is a well-known concept referring to gains in learning and retention that can occur when students take a practice test on studied material before taking a final test on the same material. Research demonstrates that students who take practice tests often outperform students in nontesting learning conditions such as restudying,…

Even though it often feels like standardized testing is a relatively recent phenomena, it has been around at least since the 1800s, when in China, those that wanted a government job were required to take a test on their expertise of Confucian philosophy and poetry. During the Industrial Revolution, standardized tests were a quick way to test large…

Many individuals working in education-related professions have a variety of needs for educational and psychological tests results regarding their students or clients. This chapter addresses school counselors' use of tests in educational settings and the right to test as a competency-based issue. Although the subject appears on the surface not to…

In many school districts, the pressure to raise test scores has created overnight celebrity status for formative assessment. Its powers to raise student achievement have been touted, however, without attending to the research on which these claims were based. Sociocultural learning theory provides theoretical grounding for understanding how…

Tests of knowledge and skills will reflect new content and new technologies in response to dramatic changes in learning environments. Tests must begin to focus on the learning objectives rather than on the process that has led to the achievement of those objectives. (Author/MLW)

The Physical Self-Description Questionnaire (PSDQ) was administered to 1,514 elite athletes and nonelite high school students. Physical self-concept was higher for the elite athletes, but gender differences were smaller in this group. Results support the usefulness of the PSDQ and extend understanding of self-concept in school settings. (SLD)

Describes the resistance of a nontraditional public high school, the Durant School, to the global changes that would destroy its local ecology. In this school, the partially successful fight against the imposition of state standards and mandated tests has been a fight to preserve the school's integrity, mission, and autonomy. (SLD)

This study investigated the factor structure of the Charles F. Kettering Scale, a measure of climate used frequently for program and curriculum revision. A total of 228 students from a junior high school campus of a large school district in the Southwestern United States completed the General Climate Factors section of the Kettering scale. Primary…

The articles in this bibliography represent holdings of the Test Center of the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory in the area of assessment in school and classroom climate, student self-concept, student motivation to learn, and student attitude toward school. The annotation for each source includes title and author information and…

The Pupil Control Ideology Form (PCI) is one of the major instruments used by researchers interested in the study of school climate. Pupil control is a central feature of the organizational life of schools, and each school appears to have a prevailing ideology of pupil control. The PCI is a self-report instrument used to measure an educator's…

Describes the Praxis III assessment, an observation-based system for assessing the skills of beginning teachers that emphasizes teacher decision-making and the importance of student, school, and curricular context. The principles and processes of the assessment's design and construction are described, and issues in teacher performance-assessment…

Use of the School Climate and Context Inventory (SCCI) as a measure of school climate was investigated. The SCCI had previously been used as a measure of climate in a study of six rural high schools in Kentucky and Tennessee; in the current study, the SCCI was administered to 20 faculty members from each school. Split-half correlation and…

A "high-stakes" test can directly and powerfully influence how teachers teach and students learn. Six principles that describe the negative consequences of measurement-driven instruction are discussed, and the effect of these consequences on student and teacher behavior, as well as the test itself, is outlined. (IAH)

Responsive assessment is explored in this book in terms of its ability to support people who learn. This book represents a search for assessment practices that are relevant and responsive. Part 1 introduces responsive assessment as a set of guidelines and as a theoretical foundation for assessment and instructional planning. Chapter 1 explores the…