This guide was designed to help state and local education agencies conduct needs assessments to better understand the strengths, challenges, and needs unique to schools serving American Indian students. It includes surveys developed collaboratively with communities that serve American Indian students to reflect the most relevant topics. Using…

The Maine Legislature requested the Maine Education Policy Research Institute (MEPRI) to conduct an assessment of standardized testing in Maine schools to understand the amount, cost, and usefulness of it. This report summarizes the resulting effort, which included a literature scan, document analysis, and surveys of two groups of school…

Recommendations for using and implementing fitness tests have been extensively researched and teachers' attitudes toward fitness tests are beginning to be studied. Less understood is how high school teachers use fitness tests and the role their attitudes toward fitness tests affect students' attitudes toward physical activity. The purpose of this…

Globalized English proficiency tests such as the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) are increasingly playing the role of gatekeepers in a globalizing world. Although the use of the IELTS as a "policy tool" for making decisions in the areas of study, work and migration impacts on test-takers' lives and life chances, not…

This study is about the role of elicited verbal imitation in toddler word learning. Forty-eight toddlers were taught eight nonwords linked to referents. During training, they were asked to imitate the nonwords. Naming of the referents was tested at three intervals (one minute later [uncued], five minutes, and 1-7 days later [cued]) and recognition…

We examined whether 2 types of interpolated tasks (i.e., retrieval-practice via free recall or guessing a missing critical item) improved final recognition for related and unrelated word lists relative to restudying or completing a filler task. Both retrieval-practice and guessing tasks improved correct recognition relative to restudy and filler…

Educational policies such as Race to the Top in the USA affirm a central role for testing systems in government-driven reform efforts. Such reform policies are often referred to as the global education reform movement (GERM). Changes observed with the GERM style of testing demand socially engaged validity theories that include consequential…

This study utilised regression methods to explain Grade 4 reading literacy achievement taking into account discrepancies between the language of the test and home language for learners who participated in the South African preProgress in International Reading Literacy Study (prePIRLS) 2011. Grade 4 learners were tested across all 11 official…

Assessment in education is a recent phenomenon. Although there were counterparts in former epochs, the term assessment only began to be spoken about in education after the Second World War; and, since that time, views, strategies and concerns over assessment have proliferated according to an uncomfortable dynamic. We fear that, increasingly,…

The fiascoes that seem to accompany the annual publication of examination results in England, the subsequent inquiries instituted to ensure they "never happen again" and the Secretary of State's decision, reversed six months later because of fears about possible EU legal challenges, to "end competition between exam boards"…

This study aims to investigate the usability level of web site of a university by observing 10 participants who are required to complete 11 tasks, which have been defined by the researchers before to gather data about effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. System Usability Scale was used to collect data about satisfaction. The research…

This study examined the underlying constructs measured by the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities, Third Edition (WJ-III COG) and the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, Fifth Edition (SB5), based on the Cattell-Horn-Carrol (CHC) theory of cognitive abilities. This study reports the results of the first joint confirmatory factor analysis…

Protocols from 108 administrations of the Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scales were evaluated to determine the frequency of examiner errors and their impact on the accuracy of three test composite scores, the Composite Ability Index (CIX), Verbal Ability Index (VIX), and Nonverbal Ability Index (NIX). Students committed at least one…

Credit by Exam is a mechanism employed in the California community colleges as a means of granting credit for student learning outside of the traditional classroom. In some instances, credit by exam is the means used to award college credit for structured learning experiences in a secondary educational setting, while in other instances knowledge…

This paper reviews the progress made in washback studies over the quarter century since Hughes' (1989) placed it at the centre of his textbook "Testing for Language Teachers." Research into washback and the development of models of washback are described and an agenda is suggested for test developers wishing to build washback into…