Many problems are encountered by school districts regardless of size. State and federal involvement in education provides certain financial resources, but also makes demands for accountability. This creates conflicts between local program development and the requirements of state and federal regulations, and particularly complicates the…

The external examiner approach to assessment can address concerns that American educational standards are low, curricular coherence is lacking, and college students are learning insufficiently. The discussion: (1) contrasts the conditions in British and American higher education that make the British model inappropriate for the United States; (2)…

Increasing numbers of state-mandated testing programs have resulted in the selection of norm-referenced tests (NRTs) for statewide assessment. Adaptation or customization of existing tests has become a viable solution for individual programs. Changes in test instruments have arisen from the behaviorist approach and mastery learning, minimum…

Designed to coordinate composition instruction between the primary and senior high school years, this curriculum guide presents a system for both the direct teaching of specific composition objectives and the assessment of student achievement and program effectiveness. The first of the guide's five major sections explains the curriculum's scope,…

This guide describes the background of the Texas Assessment of Basic Skills (TABS) program, objectives, and tests. It is designed to assist school personnel in reading and comprehending the student information contained in student performance data included in TABS reports. TABS is a criterion-referenced measure for assessment of student…

This task analysis guide is intended to help teachers and administrators develop instructional materials and implement competency-based education in the horticulture program. Section 1 contains a validated task inventory for horticulture III, IV, and V. For each task, applicable information pertaining to performance and enabling objectives,…

This task analysis guide is intended to help teachers and administrators develop instructional materials and implement competency-based education in the agricultural production program. Section 1 contains a validated task inventory for agricultural production. Tasks are divided into 10 duty areas: orienting the student to agricultural production,…

The Chief State School Officers of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) have adopted a recommendation calling for comparable state measures of educational progress through multiple indicators, including student achievement. Current state criterion-referenced testing programs provide information regarding specific student skills and…

This publication is the concluding text in a four-part curriculum for air conditioning and refrigeration. Materials in Book 4 are designed to complement theoretical and functional elements in Books 1-3. Instructional materials in this publication are written in terms of student performance using measurable objectives. The course includes six…

Focusing on formal testing programs involving academic achievement, the assessment of student performance in 28 large city school districts is described. In addition to presenting how districts have designed testing programs to meet the variety in the students they serve, this report also discussed test management, work with test publishers, test…

Test item selection techniques based on traditional item analysis methods were compared to techniques based on item response theory. The consistency of mastery classifications in criterion referenced reading tests was examined. Pretest and posttest data were available for 945 first and second grade students and for 1796 fourth to sixth grade…

In this report, test results on the Georgia Criterion-Referenced Tests (GCRT) are presented for first-, fourth-, and eighth-grade Atlanta pupils. A brief report of results on the Georgia Basic Skill Tests (GBST) for tenth graders is also included. Specifically, the GCRT is designed to assess students' performance on reading (including concepts in…

The Dallas (Texas) Independent School District has developed an assessment system that is fully integrated into its learning system, which also includes planning, instruction, and accountability. This paper describes the learning system in Dallas in terms of a four-part model: planning, instruction, assessment, and accountability. Following this,…

The purpose of this study was to (1) develop and validate criterion-referenced tests to measure science knowledge of students who finished the fifth grade, as well as those who finished the three cycles of the General Education and (2) to assess the performance on these tests of a national, random sample of fourth-, sixth-, seventh-, and…

The 1984 "Introduction to High School" program provided seven weeks of academic training for about 600 underachievers in reading and/or mathematics at six Chicago high schools. Evaluation findings indicate that (1) the process of student selection and program implementation during the 1984 program was markedly better that that of the 1983 initial…