The study reported here is part of a larger project which provides baseline data on local school district evaluation offices: their organization, financing, personnel, activities and relationships to other district functions. This analysis explores the relationship of the characteristics of the context in which an evaluation takes place, such as…

The purpose of the National Assessment of Educational Progress is to determine what young Americans know and can do, and to measure changes in their educational achievement over time. Several learning areas are monitored: reading and literature, writing, mathematics, science, social studies and citizenship, art, music, and career and occupational…

It is assumed that the delineation of values is critical to proper needs assessments. "Need" is defined as a requisite or desideratum generated as a discrepancy between a target state (T) and an actual state (A), if and only if the presence of the conditions defined by T can be shown significantly to harm, indispose, or constrain a subject (S).…

The fourth revision of this report, prepared under the sponsorship of the Cooperative Accountability Project (CAP), contains seven state accountability statutes enacted in 1975, as well as two other statutes enacted in 1972 and 1973. The contents of the nine laws consist of directives and recommendations for comprehensive planning, evaluation of…

This paper attempts to provide practical guidance to those individuals responsible for selecting or developing instruments for assessment programs. The question of what to measure in an assessment program is addressed at a global and a specific level. Once a developer has identified the areas to be assessed, it is necessary to consider the…

One model of educational needs assessment stresses: (1) deciding what students should learn in school, (2) measuring whether they learn it, and (3) looking at gaps between desired learnings and actual learnings to identify educational needs and priorities. In this study, it was assumed that practically all students should master…

Assumptions that learning is basically concept development and that it is also a process of successive approximations of a terminal behavior lead the author to a definition of concept and a hierarchy of concept development. The nine-stage model of cognitive development is presented in a chart with sample items and instrumentation for each state.…

Describes evaluation, revision, and decision to implement as the three components of LVR, and relates them to student tryout and revision, developmental testing, and formative evaluation. (DAG)

Overview of the educational strengths and weaknesses of computer assisted learning within the National Development Programme in Computer Assisted Learning. (Author)

Schools are intellectually inane, sterile, oppressive institutions, and parents, generally, are happy with schools as they are. Suggestions for improvement fare badly because there are few around who are really concerned with whether the whole ship floats or sinks. (Author/MJB)

The author argues that general intelligence assessment should be abandoned on moral and theoretical grounds, but that the conceptualization, testing, and identification of specific intellectual abilities is both defensible and worthwhile. (MB)

This article summarizes findings of the National Assessment of Educational Progress which surveyed the writing skills of 95,000 students aged 9, 13, and 17 in 1974, 1979, and 1984. (MT)

The papers in this journal, dedicated exclusively to problems in the teaching of statistics, fall into two categories: (1) policies and procedures intended to improve the teaching of statistics; and (2) new presentations of relevant statistical topics intended to improve specific pedagogical practice. Additional areas of needed research in…