This paper offers facts and figures on Utah's education status for 2008. This paper contains the following: (1) Core CRT Language Arts Testing, 2007; (2) Core CRT Mathematics Testing, 2007; (3) 2007 Public Education General Fund--Funding by Source and Expenditures by Function; (4) 2007-08 Public School Enrollment Demographics; (5) Public Schools…

This survey updates the efforts of all 50 states to align their high school standards, graduation requirements, assessments, and accountability systems with the demands of college and work, and finds that at least 48 states are now actively engaged in reform efforts of some kind. There is more momentum in the states now than at any time since…

Our research on learning enhancement has been focusing on the consequences for learning and forgetting of some of the more obvious and concrete choices that arise in instruction, including: How does spacing of practice affect retention of information over significant retention intervals (up to two years)? Do spacing effects generalize beyond…

The results of a survey on teachers' perceptions regarding Florida's test-based accountability program raised serious doubts about whether testing has precipitated positive outcomes in upper-elementary students' learning. Nearly all of the 708 Florida upper-elementary teachers who completed the survey reported that testing had a negative effect or…

Context: Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States, yet screening rates are well below target levels. Rural communities may face common and unique barriers to health care, particularly preventive health care. Purpose: To establish baseline attitudinal, knowledge, belief, and behavior measures on colorectal…

The Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) is a cross-curricular literacy test issued to all secondary school students in the province of Ontario. The test consists of a reading and a writing component, both of which must be successfully completed for secondary school graduation in Ontario. This study elicited 16 first language and second…

In the last quarter-century and especially the last decade, testing and accountability have come to dominate education policy at the state and national levels. The common concern about the effects of such testing is that it reshapes teaching in the classroom. But such claims do not look at the evidence of deeper classroom structures (the mix of…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act is currently being reviewed in Congress for reauthorization. NCLB, among the most significant U.S. education initiatives, reauthorized the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act and is founded on four primary objectives: (1) increasing accountability for states, school districts, and schools; (2) giving…

The question examined extensively in this document is why socioeconomic status and race are related to academic achievement. While most explanations look to the cognitive or cultural deficiencies of lower class and minority students, this volume considers an alternative explanation. Prevailing definitions of academic achievement undoubtedly…

Following a workshop on "Innovations in Employment Testing that Improve Validity and Reduce Adverse Impact," the City of Louisville (Kentucky) implemented a strategy to develop a comprehensive testing and recruiting program for police recruits. To improve candidate expectations and preparation, the following activities were undertaken:…

To study the home environment of the Puerto Rican as it relates to the children's academic achievement, 45 working class families were interviewed and these variables were investigated: achievement, classroom behavior inventory in relation to academic achievement, the effect of bilinguality on academic achievement, the influence of examiner…

New computer software for physics, mathematics, computer science, and statistics courses at North Carolina State University and in some high schools allows students to solve problems on the computer, recording every answer submitted to provide faculty with a record of student performance, and providing immediate feedback to students. Computerized…

Measuring student intelligence has been problematic in the United States since standardized testing first began in the early 1900s. The omnipresence of standardized testing in student populations is illustrated by the most popular contemporary tests which are used by some scholars to advance the notion that intelligence differences between whites…

This monograph provides an overview of the language situation in the three Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. It examines the recent change in language regimes that the Baltic States have deliberately brought about since the restitution of their independence, the nature of these changes, the opposition they have engendered and the…

The idea of reducing the redundancy of a verbal message in a statistical way is presented as a practiced technique of language testing. Considering the temporality of speech comprehension, and the necessarily sequential intake of information, these cues may include the serial order of elements and transitional probability. To give the background…