This handbook is designed to serve as a resource for Alaskan district-level administrators in charge of planning, implementing and monitoring districtwide student assessment programs. The information is divided into 10 chapters, including: (1) aligning assessment with curriculum and instruction; (2) planning an assessment program; (3)…

To determine why ninth grade students taking the "Minimum Basic Skills Test" (MBST) and the "California Achievement Test" (CAT) performed differently in relation to reading achievement, a study investigated whether the noted discrepencies in reading achievement on the tests were due to differences in vocabulary and…

This monograph on developing and implementing admission testing for prospective teachers includes information on: (1) competency assessment activities in 31 selected states, the basic skills assessed, and time of testing--prior to admission and/or certification; (2) competency test development; (3) competency testing for admission into teacher…

The Secondary School Admission Test Board (SSATB) is a professional educational association of nearly 650 independent elementary and secondary schools and organizations, all committed to excellence in the profession of independent school admission. In this role, the SSATB tested 47,576 students in 1986-87. The SSATB is a non-profit corporation…

This paper reports the results of a behavioral anchoring analysis of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (Form G, Level 12) vocabulary (41 items) and reading comprehension (56 items) tests. Subjects were 82 sixth-grade students enrolled at the Carterville (Illinois) Grade School. More specifically, a curriculum-referenced interpretation of the ability…

Achievement test results, in combination with other data, are used to help guidance counselors plan students' future educational programs to the extent that such data assist school personnel in grouping students for optimal instructional benefits. Implementation of such plans may require fitting the curriculum to the student. Two types of schemata…

This study was designed to analyze the relationship of Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores to applicants' choices of institutions, their admission, and their enrollment. Applicants from four fields were followed up the year after they had taken the GRE tests. Information was obtained about the departments to which the test takers applied and…

An investigation of the predictive power of the Modern Language Association (MLA) Cooperative Test Scores in French, German, and Spanish in relation to performance in student teaching is described, and criteria used by the raters to define successful performance are identified. Subjects were 103 students who completed foreign language teaching…

Components of an art program that was developed with federal funding are outlined. The model contains information on the grant proposal, including the rationale for funding, implementation strategies, activity timetable, qualifications of key personnel, activity objectives and performance measures, intitutional goals, activity milestones, and…

All teacher education students in Texas must pass three minimum competency examinations to be admitted to a teacher education program. The Pre-Professional Skills Tests (PPST) contains three separate tests in reading, mathematics, and writing. West Texas State University requires all entering freshmen to submit scores from the American College…

This study was designed to assess the effect of a process oriented elementary science curriculum upon students' achievement. The Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) Complete Battery with the social studies and science supplements was administered to sixth grade students completing one, two, or three years of the Science through Discovery program in…

A total of 2,000 essays written by 1,000 students was submitted to generalizability analyses for domain-referenced tests. Each student had written one essay on each of two prompts representing two models of discourse. Each essay was read by six readers and judged on a scale of from 1 to 4. No reader read essays from both prompts. Reader agreement…

The three articles in this newsletter focus on questions of what teacher knowledge consists of and how it can be measured. Three contemporary efforts to assess teacher knowledge, each with a different purpose, are presented. The first, based on a report of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, summarizes state assessment efforts and…

This preliminary investigation explored a means of maximizing the use of standardized test results. In addition to the usual package of alpha and ranked norm-referenced test reports, a special series of reports by the California Test Bureau/McGraw-Hill was generated for remedial reading and mathematics teachers. These reports displayed primarily…

Minimum competency testing (MCT) programs for students are growing in popularity and being adopted by many states. In order to determine the extent of the MCT movement, researchers at North Carolina State University surveyed state departments of education in all 50 states. In updating these data for 1986-1987, it was found that 64 percent of the…