After an extensive review of the available research on large-scale writing assessment, certain issues in writing assessment seem to be unresolved, and still other issues are not supported by adequate research. This paper reviews the basic issues in writing assessment, points out which topics are supported by strong research, and which topics are…

Four influential studies on school effectiveness reported by Brookover and Lezotte (1979), Edmonds and Frederiksen (1979), Phi Delta Kappa (1980), and Rutter and others (1979) are limited in their usefulness as recipes for creating effective schools by the following four issues: (1) The four studies differ in their definition of what…

The charge of the Full Day Kindergarten Committee of the Bay Shore Union Free School District was to determine whether Bay Shore schools should initiate a full day kindergarten or continue with the present half day program. Five methods were used to analyze the potential of the full day program: (1) full day kindergarten visitations, (2) faculty…

The results of visits by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems to Arizona's three public universities to observe the status of institutional effort to assess the quality of undergraduate education are presented as a working paper in the final report of the Arizona Board of Regents' Task Force on Excellence, Efficiency and…

Twelve issues of the National Education Association's (NEA) newsletter for NEA members in higher education focus on the following subjects: (1) NEA endorsement of Dukakis candidacy, and organizing at Southern Illinois University; (2) Dukakis STARS plan: a solid solution, and the Dukakis advantage; (3) the 100th Congress: praise from NEA, and the…

Thirteen issues of the National Education Association (NEA) newsletter highlight the following: (1) Bork, Supreme Court nomination and NEA affiliate win on pay bias suit; (2) NEA presidential endorsements; (3) TIAA-CREF (Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association and College Retirement Equities Fund) response to critics held inadequate; (4) NEA…

For the past three years, the Board of Governors has made the development and implementation of the California Community College Management Information System (MIS) a major priority. Following two years of pilot testing with five community college districts, statewide implementation of Phase I of MIS is slated to begin in July/August 1989. Several…

The history of the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) is discussed. The organization was founded in February 1938 when 45 college teachers and 12 persons from state departments of education or public schools adopted a constitution for the National Association of Teachers of Educational Measurement. The revised constitution of 1943…

This paper discusses how developmental programs in Georgia obtain and maintain their status as "Training Center." The establishment in Houston County, Georgia of a "Training Center," an innovative school outreach program that disseminates an early intervention program for high-risk 6-year olds, exemplifies how outreach services…

Two major groups of researchers focus on identifying schools that have been unusually effective in terms of their students' achievement: (1) "effective schools" researchers; and (2) those charged with the responsibility of identifying schools for special recognition. However, all legitimate attemps to operationalize school effectiveness…

The history of the Project for Area Concentration Achievement Testing (PACAT), a university based national curriculum assessment project, is described in this report. The project performs surveys of academic curricula by content area, collects examination items from the faculty of participating departments, and constructs, distributes, and scores…

An assessment of the review process for selection of documents for inclusion in the Clearinghouse on Tests, Measurement, and Evaluation of the Educational Research Information Center (ERIC/TM) is presented. The review process is used to cull irrelevant or technically flawed material from the over 1,500 acquired documents. The clearinghouse, which…

This paper presents the procedures used for carrying out a needs assessment concerning drug and alcohol abuse prevention and intervention efforts across nine western states and the Pacific territories prior to and subsequent to the receipt of United States Department of Education funds to implement training and technical services in the region.…

Designed as a concerted effort to control the paperwork and reduce the number of data collection reports required by the Connecticut State Department of Education, this report lists the forms the department will use in the 1988-89 school year to collect data on the condition and the progress of education in Connecticut. An introductory section…

Though program evaluation has been an important focus of higher education for the last 20 years, traditional evaluation models have been ineffective for on-going programs, particularly those where the outcomes are multifaceted or undefined. Over the last five years, several alternative viewpoints on program evaluation have been suggested which…