The Texas Academic Skills Program (TASP), enacted into law in the fall of 1989, was designed to insure that public college students in Texas would have the basic skills necessary to perform in college-level courses. The TASP law requires that students be tested prior to completing 9 or 15 semester hours of college-level work. The law also requires…

In the United States today, policymakers and citizens believe that the quality of their schools must be improved. Reform policies and strategies are the focus of the first section of this report. The four areas identified are the perception and interpretation of the problems of quality, the methods of preparing reform or ad hoc measures, the main…

The Neighborhood Schools Improvement Act (H.R. 3320) was ordered to be reported by the House Committee on Education and Labor on October 17, 1991. This report provides an introduction to the "systemic statewide reform" concept, on which H.R. 3320 is largely based, plus a summary of the bill, and a discussion of selected issues related to…

This study of higher education efficiency evaluation consists of five country reports from five different regions of the world: Colombia, Jordan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, and Nigeria. The reports describe the approaches to the evaluation process in each country and in the process highlight common concerns and awareness. The studies were all…

The National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) adopted mathematics achievement standards on May 11, 1991 that will be used to report results on the 1990 assessment of mathematics. NAEP achievement levels are descriptions, based on informed judgments, of what students should know and be able…

Two papers are presented that resulted from the Instructional Assessment Project of the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing. Both relate to models for assuring assessment validity. The first paper--"Assessing the Content Validity of Teachers' Reports of Content Coverage and Its Relationship to Student…

This document argues that current efforts to establish a national test to measure progress toward the nation's educational goals will inhibit, rather than advance, educational reform. Proponents of a national test have asked for single, primarily multiple-choice tests, or for performance assessments to measure progress toward the nation's…

A statistical report, comprised largely of six tables of school district data, is presented to provide an overview of the educational status of New York State-supported elementary schools and secondary schools for the 1989-90 school year. Tables include: (1) racial/ethnic distributions of enrollment, attendance rate, dropouts, youth at risk, and…

The mission of the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL) is to help others improve outcomes for children, youth, and adults by providing research and development assistance to schools and communities. In this 1990 annual report of the NWREL to its members, the seven areas of emphasis that guide the planning of NWREL activities for…

Some observations are offered about alternative assessment devices, performance assessments in particular. The act of conducting alternative assessment does not automatically ensure good assessment. Users must become knowledgeable consumers of published alternative assessment tools and developers of local and classroom assessments. Performance and…

This resource book contains 10 articles on specific aspects of writing assessment. Article one addresses several key issues, among them (1) whether writing should be taught from a traditional analytic approach or from the "writing-as-a-process" perspective, (2) whether writing ability can be judged indirectly or only by actual performance, and (3)…

The last of three volumes studying the relationship between writing research and instruction, this four-part report focuses on writing assessment. The first section details specifications for an instrument assessing student writing samples and the following composition skills: word processing, sentence processing, paragraph development,…

This paper describes the "District Level Indicators Supporting Quality Schools" and gives suggestions on the use of the instrument. The indicators were developed from research on effective schools and focus on activities and policies supporting quality schools. The instrument is a series of statements of goals, practices, policies, and…

The current concern with educational excellence and reform prompted by six recent national reports has significant implications for law-related education (LRE). These reports are A Nation At Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, Action for Excellence, Making the Grade: Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on Federal Elementary…

Analyzed in this report is salient research on exemplary schools based on alternative models of identifying exemplary programs by expert judgment or by regression analysis. The conclusion is that characteristics of exemplary schools are remarkably similar regardless of how they are identified, supporting the view that the characteristics are…