Statistical, legal and moral problems involved in following the EEOC guidelines are described. The guidelines require separate data for minority and non-minority groups with differential cut off scores for aptitude tests which have a racial bias. Problems reviewed include: identification of racial bias in tests is difficult; giving one race an…

This guide provides instructional and evaluative materials intended to help the classroom teacher improve the curriculum. Chapters include materials on articulation, evaluation, stating behavioral objectives, beginning a foreign language at the elementary level, the role of foreign languages in the junior high school, teaching culture, evaluation,…

The objectives of this study were twofold: first, to develop an improved version of the instruments used to measure Goal IV (Attitude Toward School and School Learning) at the fifth and eleventh grade levels in the public schools of Pennsylvania under a program of "Educational Quality Assessment" mandated by the legislature. Secondly, it was the…

Project 3 of the GUME research project on foreign language teaching methods, in line with Projects 1 and 2, questions whether the best effect in language teaching is achieved solely by intensive drilling of the structure in question (the implicit method) or if grammatical explanations further the assimilation of the patterns so that, within the…

The Early Childhood Prekindergarten Assessment Instrument is a criterion referenced approach designed to help locate the child along a developmental curriculum sequence. Certain skills are analyzed according to auditory, visual, motor, and verbal learning processes, and determine what level the child has attained prior to entering school. Along…

About 62.8 million of the total U.S. population live in the South; of these, about 10% live in the "rural" South. Young people (under 25 years of age) constitute almost half of the total population in the South--29.4 million. Over one-third of all southern people are under 18 years of age. The racial composition of the youth population…

Differing attitudes of researchers and preschool teachers towards research in early childhood are discussed in this paper. These differences are seen as arising from causes such as the special training of each group and the nature of the work they do, the distribution of the sexes in each group and the social institutions which back them. The…

Issues relating to handicapped students on college campuses include: who is handicapped; standardized tests and students with health impairments; and reasonable accommodations for students (including readers and interpreters, and students with AIDS, alcohol or drug addiction, or emotional problems). (Author/MLW)

The REEP (Arlington Education and Employment Program) 2-year special project, which set out to research, develop, field-test, and establish recommendations for alternative assessment methods for the language and literacy development of adult learners of English as a Second Language (ESL), is described and evaluated. Goals and needs of 117 adult…

An alternative assessment instrument developed to assess oral language skills of students in Spanish immersion programs in the United States is described. Originally developed by the Center for Applied Linguistic to evaluate 6-year-old immersion students' speaking and listening skills in a school in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the Student Oral…

This document is intended to assist adult educators in helping their students develop the confidence and test-taking skills required to overcome test anxiety. Section 1 contains the following items: an instrument designed to help students privately assess their standing on the anxiety scale; a play which explores flashing back to earlier negative…

A survey investigated the attitudes of Japanese university students and their non-Japanese university teachers toward testing and the use of textbooks in their English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classroom. Subjects were 120 students and 13 native English-speaking instructors at 3 Japanese universities. Results reveal a gap in attitudes between the…

This report summarizes evaluation results on the costs and benefits of administering ACT's EXPLORE assessment in AISD during its pilot year in 2000-2001.

An overview of the Educational Testing Service (ETS) of Princeton, NJ is presented. A New York State legislature truth-in-testing bill now requires: reporting of student scores and access to answer sheets, publishing of questions used, reporting on test research, and assurances of confidentiality. Implications for ETS are discussed. (MLW)

Investigates the reliability of measures of linguistic accuracy in second language writing. The study uses a holistic scale, error-free T-units, and an error classification system on the essays of English-as-a-Second-Language students and discusses why disagreements arise within a rater and between raters. (24 references) (Author/CK)