This study examines how passage availability and reading comprehension question format (open-ended vs. multiple-choice) influence question answering. In two experiments, college undergraduates read an expository passage and answered open-ended and multiple-choice versions of text-based, local, and global bridging inference questions. Half the…

The purposes of the present study were to determine if (a) students trained to demonstrate specific skills learn these skills and transfer them to actual counseling sessions; (b) mastery of counseling skills differs by students' adherence to one of four general counseling theories; (c) mastery of counseling skills is related to counseling goal…

Elementary and middle school children were given a large battery of tests evaluating reading subskills and reading-related cognitive abilities. These measures were used to define latent representing skills and abilities believed to be important components of reading comprehension. Hypothesized relationships among these constructs were specified…

Although the belief has been expressed that performance assessments are intrinsically more fair than multiple-choice measures, some forms of performance assessment may in fact be more likely than conventional tests to tap construct-irrelevant factors. As performance assessment grows in popularity, it will be increasingly important to monitor the…

Because of the Goals 200 Quality Improvement program of the federal government, Head Start agencies are being held more accountable for their employees and the overall operation of their program. To evaluate these more effectively, agencies need an effective employee evaluation instrument. Strategies were implemented in an agency that provides…

The amount of variability contributed to large-scale performance assessment scores by raters is a constant concern for those who wish to use results from these assessments for educational decisions. This study approaches the problem by examining the behaviors of essay scorers who demonstrate different levels of proficiency with a holistic scoring…

This book is designed to help teachers use journals to integrate authentic assessment with the instruction of mathematics. It provides a structure to encourage students to write regularly in mathematics. The book is designed to help teachers develop their own assessment questions and activities for additional mathematical explorations. For each…

This book is a collection of articles on assessment in mathematics selected from issues of three journals: "The Arithmetic Teacher" (later published as "Teaching Children Mathematics"), "The Mathematics Teacher," and "Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School". Articles provide background, rationale, or a…

This paper explains the multifacet technology for analyzing performance examinations and the fair average method of setting criterion standards. The multidimensional nature of performance examinations requires that multiple and often different facets elements of a candidate's examination form be accounted for in the analysis. After this is…

A study examined the effects of statewide performance-based assessment (the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP)) on literacy instruction, administrative support provided to facilitate instructional change, and student and teacher affect in response to change in elementary classrooms. Of the schools in Maryland identified by…

In foreign language testing, as in all testing, validity is the primary criterion for test quality. However plausible the concept of validity, in practice it is not always easy to arrive at congruence between the test situation and the real-life situation the learner is expected to master. Some language educators make authenticity a major…

Not infrequently, investigators assume that reliability for groups is greater than reliability for persons, or that the error variance for groups is less than that for persons. Using generalizability theory, it is shown that this "conventional wisdom" is not necessarily true. Examples are provided from the course-evaluation and the…

The number of women in the workforce has increased dramatically. However, the number of high school females enrolled in physical science classes remains low. To aid in ensuring that females succeed in the physical sciences, a symposium was held. This document highlights the events of the aforementioned symposium. The "Girls and the Physical…

Researchers and education leaders may seek to identify high-performing schools for at least three purposes. The first is to study how the practices in high-performing schools differ from those in average- or low-performing schools, in the hope that some of these practices will prove useful in improving other schools. The second is to use the…

Imagine conducting a classroom observation and having a professional-looking observation report completed before you ever leave the room. This CD is the busy school administrator's best friend, bringing the tasks of completing classroom observation reports and performance evaluation reports into the 21st century. This innovative CD-ROM helps make…