In January 1982, Wytheville Community College (WCC) adopted the English Qualifying Exam (EQE) as a mandatory placement test for all students wishing to enter English 101 or 111 (two first-quarter, college-level courses). Although the EQE proved suitable for placing students and predicting the number of quarters that would be required to complete…

The Freedoms Scale was developed to assess the attitudes of slow learning and nonacademic secondary students in Canada toward democratic values, and, in particular, toward civil liberties. Vignettes were developed around situations describing threats to an individual or group's constitutional rights. Students were asked how they feel (e.g.,…

This report describes technical plans and progress during the second year (Fiscal Year 1984) of work on the U.S. Army's Project A: "Improving the Selection, Classification, and Utilization of Army Enlisted Personnel." Project A is a long-range research program developed by the Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social…

Curriculum alignment (CA) refers to the congruence of all the elements of a school's curriculum: curriculum goals; instructional program--what is taught and the materials used; and tests used to judge outcomes. CA can be a very powerful can be a very powerful factor in improving schools. Although further research is needed on CA, there is…

A study investigated the presentation of values in children's books, using a scale that was developed specifically for the study. The values categories of the scale were (1) positive behavior, (2) positive feelings, (3) negative behavior, (4) negative feelings, (5) Judeo-Christian religious values, (6) other religious values, (7) traditional…

This study examined agreement rates between identified strengths and weaknesses in shared abilities and influences on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC). Sixty-seven students in the first through seventh grades referred for learning disabilities (LD) evaluation were…

The Infant Care Survey (ICS) was developed to measure new mothers' confidence in their knowledge and skills regarding the care of babies under one year of age. One potential use of this test would be the identification of groups at high risk for health problems or for avoiding medical care. Self-efficacy was an important construct in the…

This manual, which provides extensive new instructions for administering the Functional Assessment Inventory (FAI), is intended to enable counselors to begin using the inventory without undergoing any special training. The first two sections deal with the need for functional assessment and issues in the development and use of the inventory. The…

The aims of the projects described in this paper were to develop and evaluate a new approach to the assessment of English language skills of English as a second language (ESL) students. The approach makes use of optical scanning equipment in scoring cloze-elide test exercises, thereby providing a rapid, relatively inexpensive and objective measure…

This study attempted to determine the effectiveness of cloze procedures as norm-referenced instruments by comparing the differential responses of four groups of college students of English as a second language on two identical cloze passages. The responses were scored using both exact-answer and acceptable-word methods. The results indicate that…

The rationale and the methodology used in a study of high school graduates' viewpoints on science-technology-society (STS) topics are reviewed in this paper. The study employed the instrument, Views on Science-Technology-Society (VOSTS), which required students to write an argumentative paragraph responding to one of 46 statements about an STS…

Multidimensional item difficulty (MID) is proposed as a means of describing test items which measure more than one ability. With mathematical story problems, for instance, both mathematical and verbal skills are required to obtain a correct answer. The proposed measure of MID is based upon three general assumptions: (1) the probability of…

The problems existing during the reorganization of the Cleveland School District into a unitary administration are presented from the perspective of the head of the Research and Analysis Department. The district had been fighting a desegregation case for 9 years and operating in a receivership with a triple bureaucracy imposed upon it (the normal…

This paper reports on the development of three self-efficacy questionnaires for use in studying the interaction effect among students, teachers, and principals within an educational situation. The Student Self-Efficacy Instrument was designed from a widely used questionnaire administered to children, the Intellectual Achievement Responsibility…

This report contains two tests designed to assess the level of technological literacy for a 12th-grade student in the United States in the 1980s. The tests are based on a literature review and on nine criteria for technological literacy that were established using the Delphi technique. This report contains a 27-item test, a list of works examined…