The need for remedial English education among college freshmen has increased, and there exists no standardized approach to proficiency assessment and placement among institutions of higher education. After completing freshmen English courses, 922 students attending a four-year university were assessed to determine accurate variables for use in…

Once every three years, school districts receiving Chapter 1 funds are required to conduct a study of the sustained effects of their Chapter 1 programs. To meet this requirement, the Columbus (Ohio) Public Schools employed a fall-spring test design to determine the degree to which pupils who participated in the Compensatory Language Experiences…

The Value Added Program for assessing undergraduate education at Northeast Missouri State University is described. The program is in its 12th year and has as its driving force a comprehensive student data base that includes measures of individual student performance at the entering freshman level and at the end of the sophomore year, as well as…

This document consists of volumes 1-9 of the Mathematics Association of America's (MAA) Placement Test Program Newsletter. The MAA is the professional association primarily concerned with undergraduate education in mathematics. It has responded to the increasingly difficult problem of placing freshmen students in mathematics courses by developing…

The United States is not doing as well as it could in assessing educational outcomes in the 1980s. The assessment movement of the 1980s indicates that its institutional memory is poor, and when coping with outside pressures, it is slow to recall how it coped the last time it was under pressure. It is important to remember such events and pressures…

This study was designed to determine the level of support among Saddleback College (California) students and faculty for maintaining the current exclusivity of the Mathematics Department in certifying student competence in mathematics as required for the associate degree. The study also identified current practices used by California community…

This competency-based curriculum guide on the specialty area of carpentry is part of the Introduction to Construction series. The series is designed with the flexible training requirements of open shop contractors, preapprenticeship programs, multicraft high school programs, technology education programs, and cooperative education programs in…

Results of a 1983 survey of Texas foreign language teachers reveal their views and concerns about a new state law requiring all prospective language teachers to pass an oral proficiency interview for certification beginning in 1986. Of the 142 respondents, most were Spanish teachers, high school teachers, and teachers with more than 10 years…

The status of English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction in Canada's community colleges is assessed in this report. Following an introduction to the concerns of the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC) with regard to ESL education, results are presented from a nationwide survey focusing on ESL programs, students, and teachers;…

This project's main objective was to field test competency-based vocational education (CBVE) student learning guides developed during 1979-1981 at Ridge Vocational-Technical Center (RVTC) (Florida). The learning guides were for six programs: clerical occupations, cosmetology, heavy duty truck/bus mechanics, industrial electricity, masonry, and…

A study sought to determine if there were significant relationships among preservice teachers' learning style, attitude toward reading, composite score on the American College Test (ACT), declared major, high school grade point average, vocabulary score, and reading comprehension score in predicting performance in a basic skills course in reading…

Focusing on four methods of teacher evaluation (principal visits, student evaluations, achievement tests, and peer evaluations), attitudes of elementary and secondary school teachers in Florida and Utah were gathered through interviews and questionnaires. Teachers expressed little or no hostility to principal visits, but viewed them as perfunctory…

A study investigated 261 Mexican American mothers' estimations of their preschool children's cognitive performance. Existing literature on parental estimations was reviewed. The McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA) were administered to 107 boys and 154 girls, ranging from 32 to 75 months of age. The children's mothers were then asked how…

The Pennsylvania Educational Quality Assessment data have consistently shown differences between rural, suburban, and urban schools in terms of performance on goal areas and on important background variables. The most consistent pattern has been demonstrated by achievement on cognitive measures. The analyses reported upon were conducted on the…

The central problem in educational improvement at the state and local level is the tension between school-level autonomy and systemwide uniformity; educational change is limited by three special conditions: (1) inertial autonomy, (2) essential uniformity of public schools, and (3) the fact that effective schools have characteristics that cannot be…