The U.S. Department of Education has shown support for vocational education through a number of initiatives. Task forces on, for example, defense preparedness and entrepreneurship education have been established at the national level. Two new programs--corrections education and rural education--have been established and have had a significant…

This is the third of three technical reports that focus on the hiring and evaluation of educational personnel in Illinois. Practices used by colleges and universities to assess prospective educational personnel at the graduate level are presented in this report. A questionnaire was sent to persons responsible for all state-approved educational…

The recommendations presented in this report were developed and unanimously supported by ten major California community college organizations to address systemwide strengths and weaknesses. Following a brief statement of the issue, recommendations are provided for the following areas: (1) student access and success, reaffirming the open door…

Psychological theories have long had a pronounced effect on the diagnosis and instruction of children with learning problems. Traditional theorists emphasized the centrality of global processes assumed to be common to most if not all cognitive tasks. These processes were quite distant from those involved in traditional academic activities, making…

Recent changes in educational assessment in France reflect pressures to modernize the French educational system to align it with prevailing democratic and egalitarian values and to respond to the economy's vocational training needs. After providing background on the French educational system, this paper discusses two areas of secondary school…

The Center for the Study of Evaluation (CSE) undertook a three-year study to provide educational policy makers with basic, new information on classroom achievement testing across the United States. Conducted from 1979 through 1983, CSE's research investigated a wide range of types of formal assessment measures as well as some less formal means for…

Intended for students taking the Grade 12 Examination in English 30 in Alberta, Canada, this reading test (to be administered along with the questions booklet) contains 10 short reading selections taken from fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama, including the following: "My Magical Metronome" (Lewis Thomas); "Queen Street…

Intended for students taking the Grade 12 Diploma Examinations in English 33 in Alberta, Canada, this reading test (to be administered along with the questions booklet) contains 10 short reading selections taken from fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama, including the following: "How to Set a World Record" (William Allen); "Andy…

Intended for students taking the Grade 12 Diploma Examinations in English 33 in Alberta, Canada, this reading test contains 70 multiple choice test items over the 10 readings in the readings booklet. The questions examine students' skills in (1) understanding meanings, (2) understanding and interpreting the relationships between form and content,…

Intended for students taking the Grade 9 English Language Arts Achievement Test in Alberta, Canada, this reading test (to be administered along with the questions booklet) contains eight short reading selections taken from fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including the following: "Thieving Raffles" (Eric Nicol); "Flight of the…

Intended for students taking the Grade 9 Language Arts Achievement Test in Alberta, Canada, this reading test contains 65 multiple choice test items related to the eight selections in the reading booklet and to a cartoon and four additional reading selections within this booklet. The questions examine the student's skills in (1) understanding…

This essay focuses on a key change that the author has experienced in the practice of program evaluation research over the past 20 years: the accommodation of the logic of science and the psychology of politics. This change has substantially altered the role of the evaluator, the evaluator's relationship with clients, the design of an evaluation…

This effectiveness review of the California Literacy Campaign (CLC), a program designed to significantly reduce the number of functionally illiterate adults in California, was submitted to the California State Library for consideration of continuation of state funding beyond 1984-85. The review includes an analysis of existing data (state library…

Focusing on trends in reading achievement during the period from l970 to l984, this report draws from national assessments that involved more than 250,000 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds. The first chapter (1) provides an overview of the report; (2) summarizes recent achievements documented by the…

Higher education evaluation practices in seven states were assessed. Consolidated governing boards were present in Florida, Idaho, and West Virginia, while coordinating boards were present in Alabama, Colorado, and South Carolina. Washington State had an advisory board. For each state, a background paper on the state system was prepared by a…