This pilot study explores the perceptions of distance education students of their classroom environment using the College/University Classroom Environment Inventory (CUCEI), a traditional classroom assessment tool. The CUCEI has seven scales that cover the areas of personalization, involvement, student cohesiveness, satisfaction, task orientation,…

Describes the development of two instruments for use with preservice and practicing teachers: Attitudes toward Computer Technologies and Self-Efficacy for Computer Technologies. Graduate and undergraduate students completed the instruments. Results provide initial instrument validation. The paper presents data on content validity and results of…

Diagnosis of dementia in adults with intellectual disabilities requires documentation of clinically significant declines in memory and other cognitive skills, as well as changes in everyday and emotional functioning. To improve diagnostic accuracy in adults with Down syndrome, the authors examined conditions often associated with dementia, as well…

The purpose of this article is to highlight ways in which middle school content area teachers can more effectively assess English Language Learners (ELLs) in their classrooms. This article poses five questions to guide middle school content teachers in making adaptations and accommodations when using traditional classroom tests. The objective of…

This document records testimony regarding the Department of Education's slow pace in providing States the assistance they require to implement No Child Left Behind's provisions for English Language Learners (ELLs) and the status of recent efforts to correct that; practices for training teachers of ELL students and for improving their academic…

The Child Development Inventory (CDI), a restandardized version of the Minnesota Child Development Inventory, is completed by parents to measure the developmental progress of their children ages 15 months to 6 years or children judged to be functioning in that age range. It measures present development in eight areas: social, self-help, gross…

Four studies are reported that used a metacognitive evaluation procedure that can be group-administered and objectively scored. The procedure assesses the knowledge monitoring component of metacognition by evaluating the discrepancy between students' estimates of how well they are likely to perform on a task and their actual performance. The first…

During the 1994-95 program year, the staff of Even Start, a family literacy program in Lincoln (Nebraska), and an evaluator collaborated to create a low-stakes, small-scale portfolio assessment to collect information on program impact. The small scale of the evaluation offered opportunities to involve the staff in each step of the portfolio…

The eight articles in this compilation provide various approaches and techniques for use by classroom teachers in the informal evaluation of student reading performance. The first article outlines the many purposes for which informal measures may be used and briefly describes the various forms such measures may take, while the second focuses on…

This instructional training package introduces practitioners to methods for developing, validating, using, and reporting criterion-referenced tests. It provides a comprehensive presentation of criterion-referenced testing technology. The package emphasizes the most recent substantive and technological advances in the field that are both important…

Florida State University instituted a mandatory system to be used in making promotion and tenure decisions, in which teaching faculty were rated by their students. Under an agreement with Michigan State University, the Student Instructional Rating System (SIRS) was adapted for use on the Florida State campus. Since the data were to be used to…

The study's purpose was to use the Adjective Check List (ACL), a self-administered personality assessment instrument, to determine whether there were response differences between a sample of Adult Basic Education (ABE) students and the general test norms. The ACL was administered to 142 students in ABE high school completion programs in Des…

This book suggests alternative strategies and methods for construct validation, research, quality assessment of schools, and design and evaluation of new approaches to instruction. It is addressed to educational managers, educational researchers, and to faculty members and graduate students in education. The author deals with four problem areas in…

A critical first step in developing training systems is gathering quality information about a trainee's competency in a skill or knowledge domain. Such information includes an estimate of what the trainee knows prior to training, how much has been learned from training, how well the trainee may perform in future task situations, and whether to…

Technical questions regarding the reliability and validity of large-scale portfolio assessment were studied which focused on: (1) whether raters can score collections of writing reliably with rubrics designed for single samples; (2) whether ratings derived from different frameworks differ in their capacities to support technically sound…