In 1991 Arizona embarked on a program to change schools and make them more accountable for educational achievement. The instrument of reform was an assessment program known as the Arizona Student Assessment Program (ASAP), the most notable feature of which was a performance assessment that was added to an already extensive battery of…

The 1992-93 school year marked the first year of implementation of the statewide mandate of the Arizona Student Assessment Program (ASAP), which revised previous legislation. Iowa Test of Basic Skills testing requirements were restricted to grades 2 and 7, and districts were allowed greater flexibility in their own testing, which had previously…

The state of Illinois recently has required state goals for learning to be identified and assessed in the following areas of learning: language arts, mathematics, biological and physical sciences, social sciences, fine arts, and physical development and health. The Illinois Goal Assessment Program (IGAP) is designed to assess the progress made…

The accountability testing programs of many states have begun to make extensive use of constructed-response questions and to report test results in terms of percentages of students at various proficiency or performance levels. This paper describes the step-by-step procedures for two standard-setting methods recently used for the New Hampshire…

The attractiveness of some European education policies and the current push toward national standards of academic achievement have converged recently in proposals for national educational testing in the United States. This paper examines the origins and status of student examination policies in 12 countries of the European Community. A major…

Commemorating the work of Anne Cleary, the author considers the need for research on assessment in the practice context, provides an example of research in context, and proposes general areas of development for assessment research in the context of practice. Research has shown that effects of testing programs on practice are often not those that…

The fifth-grade and eighth-grade science items on a state performance assessment were compared for differential item functioning (DIF) due to gender. The grade 5 sample consisted of 8,539 females and 8,029 males and the grade 8 sample consisted of 7,477 females and 7,891 males. A total of 30 fifth grade items and 26 eighth grade items were…

Lessons learned in changing a large-scale testing program are outlined. The redesigned Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) will be administered in spring 1994. Major changes for the verbal SAT section include more emphasis on critical reading, longer and more accessible passages, measurement of vocabulary in context, and use of double passages with two…

Educational refinement is defined as attempts to improve education through incremental improvements in the existing structure, while educational reform refers to change in the structure itself. A strong move is underway to reform education in the United States. It is argued that the development of assessments in support of educational reform…

This report presents Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) performance results and results on the Texas Educational Assessment of Minimum Skills (TEAMS) in October 1990. This volume is comprised of the following sections: (1) Section I, an executive summary of TAAS performance for each grade level; (2) Section II, an overview of the program…

Suffolk Community College Eastern Campus (SCCEC) designed and implemented a retention program built on the belief that access for students does not necessarily lead to success. The goal of the retention program was to increase retention of students by providing them with the skills and supports necessary to succeed. The group targeted for the…

Reports on the student assessment systems of states participating in the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory are presented. These reports were developed from the database of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. Detailed information about each state's student assessment program…

The 1992-93 school year saw the second statewide implementation of the Vermont portfolio-assessment program, and RAND continued its ongoing evaluation of the program's implementation, effects, and data quality. While the first year's study found evidence of the impact of the assessment program and low reliability of portfolio scoring, this year's…

The predictive validity of the National Teacher Examinations (NTE) tests of communications skills (CS) and general knowledge (GK) as entrance requirements for teacher education programs and for later performance on the state certification examination were studied. Data were collected for 1,143 graduates of teacher education programs in North…

The Texas Examination of Current Administrators and Teachers (TECAT) is a basic literacy test that was administered to 202,000 educators in Texas in March 1986. An in-depth case study was undertaken to examine the effects of the TECAT. The 2-year project involved 10 separate data-collection studies including structured interviews with key…