This "Almanac" provides an overview of the external quality review process, its practice and structure, its participating organizations and agencies, and its role in the self-regulation of higher education in the United States. It presents information about all the major participants in external quality review and documents the range and…

This digest discusses reform in U. S. higher education. There have been many reforms in higher education in the United States, and they have been well-documented. Two profiles of recent reform initiatives are offered. One is that of student assessment, a reform movement active since the 1980s that presses all colleges and universities to measure…

This paper from the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges is a chronological summary of the legislation and regulations adopted from 1987-1990, which govern basic skills instruction in the community colleges. The Seymour Campbell Matriculation Act of 1986 directs the Chancellor to develop a funding formula for matriculation, and…

This Critical Issue Bibliography (CRIB) Sheet focuses on assessment. Assessment has been a major trend in higher education over the last 10 years, with the nature of the literature changing significantly over the years. This annotated bibliography groups assessment resources into these categories: (1) general resources; (2) institutional…

A progress map describes the nature of development in an area of learning and thus serves as a frame of reference for monitoring individual growth. An essential feature of a progress map, which is an integral component of Developmental Assessment, is that it describes and illustrates developing competence. The first step in constructing a progress…

This book describes a comprehensive process by which schools and districts can turn piecemeal initiatives to incorporate standards into curriculum into a coherent plan. The book explains how to determine who is to teach and assess each standard and how to create a curriculum and assessment plan. It defines effective practice in linking curriculum…

Learning outcomes and their assessment has given rise to considerable debate as to whether outcomes should be graded or just pass/fail. Assessment models employing learning outcomes have been used for some time in the United Kingdom (UK) in further education programs for example National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) and General National…

This book is designed to help teachers raise the academic achievement of their students and improve the social and moral fabric of school life. To accomplish these goals, it explores and develops the relationships among teaching, learning, and assessment, asserting that these elements of school life must be joined seamlessly, and that they cannot…

Three papers from the American Association for Higher Education conference in 1990 are presented. The first, "Streams of Thought about Assessment" by K. Patricia Cross, discusses three strands of interest in assessment aimed at educational improvement. These three movements are: (1) state-level accountability; (2) institutional assessment; and (3)…

This report is part of a two-volume publication that outlines the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) 5-year plan. The plan was developed in 1995 to transform education in DoD schools and is based on the vision that the DoDEA will be a learner-centered organization, unbound by traditional school concepts of time, location, and age…

As part of the test development process, this document provides the released mathematics items and student responses to some questions from the Michigan High School Proficiency Test (HSPT) in mathematics. This packet is designed for teachers and students who are interested in understanding how the open-ended items from the HSPT in Mathematics are…

This paper explores accountability issues at the district level by focusing on school-district features that might influence school achievement. It examines the effect of input variables on student performance, over a period of four years, and takes these into account when considering school performance. For its theoretical framework, the study…

The passage of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) in the 1990s made Kentucky one of the first states to initiate comprehensive education reform. It established a legislatively mandated goal that all public schools reach "proficiency" (100 of 140 points) on an accountability index by 2014. This paper tries to predict which schools…

For several decades there has been a loud outcry from the early childhood education community that assessment, especially standardized assessment, is inappropriate during the early years. As we move through the first decade of the twenty-first century, there is a new public outcry for standards and accountability--even for preschool programs.…

This chapter presents the author's perspective on the future of educational assessment in her school district. The author reviews issues including how much testing is reasonable (in terms of time and money), how to support more instructionally useful assessment, the impact of technology on assessment, and accountability. (GCP)