This publication summarizes Alaskan school district information required by the 3-year-old Alaska Quality Schools Initiative and provides a comprehensive report on the status of public education in Alaska. Following a message from the commissioner and a one-page glance at Alaskan education, there is a brief explanation of the Alaska Quality…

Calculators were used in the 1990 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) of 4th-, 8th-, and 12th-grade public school and private school students and in the Trial State Assessment of 8th-grade public school students. Before they were tested, all of the students were trained briefly in how to use the equipment. NAEP collected information…

This report presents findings of the National Academy of Education Panel on the Evaluation of the Trial State Assessment (TSA) concerning the 1990 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics TSA program. The Panel's recommendations regarding the continuation of TSAs for review by the Congress, states, and Executive Branch of the…

Assessments should improve performance by providing usable feedback, and should not merely audit it. Problems with educational accountability policies stem from a flawed view of student assessment. Intellectual excellence cannot be obtained via one-time mandated tests composed of proxies for real challenges. Common standards should be developed…

Using matched pairs of geography questions, a new testing method for machine-scored fill-in-the-blank, multiple-digit testing (MDT) questions was compared to the traditional multiple-choice (MC) style. Data were from 118 matched or parallel test items for 4 tests from 764 college students of geography. The new method produced superior results when…

The relationship among various characteristics of evaluation studies and their overall quality was studied using all of the evaluation studies (N=366) conducted in Israel over 30 years on special projects for disadvantaged students at the elementary school level. The following variables were defined to describe each study: (1) evaluation…

This report summarizes a series of national forums on adult education and literacy sponsored by the Office of Vocational and Adult Education. The first part contains profiles of the four national forums in Seattle, Washington; St. Louis, Missouri; Charleston, South Carolina; and Newark, New Jersey. Each profile consists of brief descriptions of…

The College Outcome Measures Program (COMP) objective test is used by colleges and universities to monitor the success of their undergraduate programs and as part of general assessment efforts. At Northeast Missouri State University (Kirksville), 102 students were identified as having suspect COMP scores based on the three criteria of: (1) COMP…

Work on the development of history performance assessments is described. So far, six complete sets of assessments in United States history have been developed as part of this project. Students are first assessed on their historical knowledge of the period through a short-answer test. They are then asked to write an essay explaining the positions…

Since the authorization of the use of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) through the Trial State Assessment to provide state-based data, debate over the proposed expansion of the NAEP has strengthened. To assist states in analyzing and interpreting 1990 data on eighth-grade mathematics and to assist in planning subsequent NAEP…

The combination of increasing demands for accountability and the desire to measure a variety of complex educational outcomes makes the use of performance assessment an essential addition to the tools used to profile student achievement. Performance assessment in education is valuable for student assessment and for the assessment of teacher and…

To determine the appropriateness of existing writing assessment instruments, to set directions for future assessment, and to ensure that assessment instruments are consistent with the requirements of the new English curriculum of the Northern Territory (Australia), teachers were sampled to determine how they used the booklets of moderated writing…

Since 1988, state governments have been required to collect quarterly from private sector employers gross earnings by Social Security numbers, industry of employment, and county of employment. A study was conducted of 13 states' efforts to use this wage record database as a tool for improving educational accountability and assessing the impact of…

This paper is the second report on the purpose, methodology, and results of a large-scale statistical analysis of standardized test scores from Chicago public elementary schools for 1988 and 1989. Major purposes were to develop methods for measuring student improvement (change) at the individual and school levels, to find ways of identifying…

This report describes the results of an assessment of social studies for grades 4, 8, and 10 of English language schools in Manitoba. Students in each grade were given a written test, the results of which are reported here. The results of a survey of teachers of each grade also are reported. Additionally, interviews with grade four teachers and an…