Product Description
State education departments and school districts face an important challenge in implementing a new law that requires disadvantaged students to be held to the same standards as other students. The new requirements come from provisions of the 1994 reauthorization of Title I, the largest federal effort in precollegiate education, which provides aid to 'level the field' for disadvantaged students. "Testing, Teaching, and Learning" is written to help states and school districts comply with the new law, offering guidance for designing and implementing assessment and accountability systems.This book examines standards-based education reform and reviews the research on student assessment, focusing on the needs of disadvantaged students covered by Title I. With examples of states and districts that have track records in new systems, the committee develops a practical 'decision framework' for education officials. The book explores how best to design assessment and accountability systems that support high levels of student learning and to work toward continuous improvement."Testing, Teaching, and Learning" will be an important tool for all involved in educating disadvantaged students - state and local administrators and classroom teachers. ... Read more

Product Description
Americans have adopted a reform agenda for their schools that calls for excellence in teaching and learning. School officials across the nation are hard at work targeting instruction at high levels for all students. Gaps remain, however, between the nation’s educational aspirations and student achievement. To address these gaps, policy makers have recently focused on the qualifications of teachers and the preparation of teacher candidates.

This book examines the appropriateness and technical quality of teacher licensure tests currently in use, evaluates the merits of using licensure test results to hold states and institutions of higher education accountable for the quality of teacher preparation and licensure, and suggests alternatives for developing and assessing beginning teacher competence.

Teaching is a complex activity. Definitions of quality teaching have changed and will continue to change over time as society’s values change. This book provides policy makers, teacher testers, and teacher educators with advice on how to use current tests to assess teacher candidates and evaluate teacher preparation, ensuring that America’s youth are being taught by the most qualified candidates. ... Read more

Product Description
This technical memorandum presents the results of the Office of Technology Assessment's (OTA) review and assessment of the scientific evidence on the validity of polygraph testing.OTA has limited this technical memorandum to issues directly related to the scientific validity of the polygraph.OTA did not consider utility, privacy, constitutional, and ethical issues, among others that have been raised in the debate over polygraph testing.

We first discuss the various types of polygraph testing procedures and ways in which the polygraph is used, and then summarize the judicial, legislative, and scientific controversy over polygraph testing validity.Next, we review and evaluate both prior reviews of the scientific research on polygraph validity and the individual research studies.Finally, we discuss the range of factors that may affect polygraph validity and the possibilities for future research, and present OTA's conclusions about the scientific evidence for current and proposed Federal Government polygraph use.

In preparing this memorandum, OTA has drawn on research information available from a wide variety of sources, including the major Federal Government polygraph users, the American Polygraph Association, various private polygraph practitioners, and polygraph researchers both in the United States and abroad. ... Read more

Book Description
Educators and policy makers in the United States have relied on tests to measure educational progress for more than 150 years. During the twentieth century, technical advances, such as machines for automatic scoring and computer-based scoring and reporting, have supported states in a growing reliance on standardized tests for statewide accountability.

State assessment data have been cited as evidence for claims about many achievements of public education, and the tests have also been blamed for significant failings. As standards come under new scrutiny, so, too, do the assessments that measure their results. The goal for this workshop, the first of two, was to collect information and perspectives on assessment that could be of use to state officials and others as they review current assessment practices and consider improvements. ... Read more

Product Description
Education is a hot topic. From the stage of presidential debates to tonight's dinner table, it is an issue that most Americans are deeply concerned about. While there are many strategies for improving the educational process, we need a way to find out what works and what doesn't work as well. Educational assessment seeks to determine just how well students are learning and is an integral part of our quest for improved education.

The nation is pinning greater expectations on educational assessment than ever before. We look to these assessment tools when documenting whether students and institutions are truly meeting education goals. But we must stop and ask a crucial question: What kind of assessment is most effective?

At a time when traditional testing is subject to increasing criticism, research suggests that new, exciting approaches to assessment may be on the horizon. Advances in the sciences of how people learn and how to measure such learning offer the hope of developing new kinds of assessments-assessments that help students succeed in school by making as clear as possible the nature of their accomplishments and the progress of their learning.

Knowing What Students Know essentially explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment-what students know and how well they know it-as well as the methods used to make inferences about student learning can be made more valid and instructionally useful. Principles for designing and using these new kinds of assessments are presented, and examples are used to illustrate the principles. Implications for policy, practice, and research are also explored.

With the promise of a productive research-based approach to assessment of student learning, Knowing What Students Know will be important to education administrators, assessment designers, teachers and teacher educators, and education advocates. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

This book is a cure for insomnia
Unlike the book, this review will be pithy. Purely out of academic necessity I am required to read and utilize "Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational Assessment," for a class in the masters program in which I am enrolled in the area of Educational Management. The authors go to painstaking measures to demonstrate their knowledge of a subject that could be explained in half the amount of words and explanations. The book makes the subject matter more complicated than is necessary. It turns a dry subject into a veritable Sahara-like atmosphere.

decent
This book is not terrible and provides a good overview and introduction to assessment. The previous reviewer of this book could not have been more wrong about grades. Actually, research shows grades are a horrible predictor of success when controlling for other factors (income, socio-economic status, etc.). Research also shows there is *no* link between a grade and what someone has learned. This is because grades are relative and measure an individual's performance at one time, although I will admit that using multiple methods and more numerous testing will increase the validity of grades. If tied to the learning goals of a course, grades can be effective. But as a policy making tool or measure of what someone has learned, grades really don't say much, if anything at all.

An argument for fudging the data
The thesis of this book is that (1) tests of educational assessment are increasingly being looked at by politicians (2) this has implications for the employment of educators and (3) being very clever, we teachers should be able to come up with new wasy of measuring student performance that won't actually test what the students have learned.

Okay, perhaps that's a bit overly cynical. But not by much.

Politicians are indeed looking closely at student performance, and for the first time in a long time, thinking about grading how wellthe public school are performing. And to be fair to the teachers, the intent often has as much to do with individual political aims as it does with education. So teachers repsond in kind, ganing the system, teaching to the exams and so forth. The only parties being left out of this game are the students themselves.

Assessment is needed, both to judge how well students are doing, and to judge how well the schools themselves are doing. The finny thing is that there is a measure that's been ignored in all of this. It's called grading.

Countless studies have been done over the past 50 years to determine what the best indicator of college performance is. People have looked at SAT scores, socioeconomic status, personality and dozens of other measure, and the one measure that consistently explains most of the varience is undergraduate grades. That's it. Even given the grade inflation of the past few decades, grades are still a pretty reasonable indicator. ... Read more

Book Description
Educators and policy makers in the United States have relied on tests to measure educational progress for more than 150 years, and have used the results for many purposes. They have tried minimum competency testing; portfolios; multiple-choice items, brief and extended constructed-response items; and more. They have contended with concerns about student privacy, test content, and equity--and they have responded to calls for tests to answer many kinds of questions about public education and literacy, international comparisons, accountability, and even property values.

State assessment data have been cited as evidence for claims about many achievements of public education, and the tests have also been blamed for significant failings. States are now considering whether to adopt the "common core" academic standards, and are also competing for federal dollars from the Department of Education's Race to the Top initiative. Both of these activities are intended to help make educational standards clearer and more concise and to set higher standards for students. As standards come under new scrutiny, so, too, do the assessments that measure their results.

This book summarizes two workshops convened to collect information and perspectives on assessment in order to help state officials and others as they review current assessment practices and consider improvements. ... Read more

Product Description
Use teacher-made tests, appropriate testing accommodations, technology-based testing, and classroom-based assessments to give students with diverse needs the opportunity to achieve! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Forms, stories, vignettes, and checklists guide educators in the latest techniques
Spencer J. Salend's CLASSROOM TESTING AND ASSESSMENT FOR ALL STUDENTS: BEYOND STANDARDIZATION tells how to give all students an equal chance at superior performance on tests. Classroom and school-based examples supplement information outlining research-based strategies for teacher implementation. Forms, stories, vignettes, and checklists guide educators in the latest techniques. ... Read more

Product Description
The dramatic shift in the American labor market away from manufacturing and the growing gap in earnings between high school and college graduates have contributed to a sense of alarm about the capacity of the nation's schools to supply adequately skilled graduates to the work force. The role that schools can or should play in preparing people to enter the world of work is hotly debated. In an effort to nurture the important and ongoing national dialogue on these issues, the Board on Testing and Assessment asked researchers and policymakers to engage in an interdisciplinary review and discussion of available data and implications for assessment policy. "Transitions in Work and Learning" considers the role of assessment in facilitating improved labor market transitions and life-long learning of American workers. It addresses the apparent mismatch between skill requirements of high-performance workplaces and skills acquired by students in school, the validity of existing assessment technologies to determine skills and competencies of persons entering various occupations, and ethical and legal issues in the implementation of new testing and certification programs.The book also examines the role of assessment in determining needed skills; developing ongoing education and training; and providing information to employers, prospective workers, and schools. ... Read more

Product Description
Although computer-based tests (CBT) have been administered for many years, improvements in the speed and power of computers coupled with reductions in their cost have made large-scale computer delivery of tests increasingly feasible. CBT is now a common form of test delivery for licensure, certification, and admissions tests. Many large-scale, high-stakes testing programs have introduced CBT either as an option or as the sole means of test delivery. Although this movement to CBT has, to a great extent, been successful, it has not been without problems. Advances in psychometrics are required to ensure that those who rely on test results can have at least the same confidence in CBTs as they have in traditional forms of assessment.

This volume stems from an ETS-sponsored colloquium in which more than 200 measurement professionals from eight countries and 29 states convened to assess the current and future status of CBT. The formal agenda for the colloquium was divided into three major segments: Test Models, Test Administration, and Test Analysis and Scoring. Each segment consisted of several presentations followed by comments from noted psychometricians and a break-out session in which presenters and discussants identified important issues and established priorities for a CBT research agenda. This volume contains the papers presented at the colloquium, the discussant remarks based on those papers, and the research agenda that was generated from the break-out sessions.

Computer-Based Testing: Building the Foundation for Future Assessments is must reading for professionals, scholars, and advanced students working in the testing field, as well as people in the information technology field who have an interest in testing.
... Read more

Product Description

Schools have undergone enormous change in the last ten years in response to the standards movement.  New teachers will face the challenge of meeting state curriculum standards and new forms of assessment that derive in part from the No Child Left Behind policy.  As part of the “Pathways to Teaching Series”, Assessment Throughout the Year offers a brief, practical, and accessible text for teachers who need help mastering the skills of standards-based assessment and collaborative planning for this new teaching environment. 

This book on classroom-based assessment can help teachers, especially those new to the classroom, to plan their instruction at the beginning of the school year based on the standards assessment data, find alternative forms of cumulative assessment to evaluate student achievement as described in the state or district standards, and to design teaching practices to meet the curriculum pacing and benchmark assessments of the school year.   Learning objectives, chapter introductions, graphic organizers, and essential vocabulary at the beginning of each chapter prepare the reader for the content to follow. 

Product Description

Classroom Assessment FOR Student Learning: Doing It Right–Using It Well is a combination textbook and workbook grounded in research shown to increase student motivation and learning through improved classroom assessment. This user-friendly, practical book is full of real-world examples of what assessment for learning looks like in today’s classrooms.   Presented in a format appropriate for use by individuals or collaborative learning teams, the book has an exceptionally strong focus on integrating assessment with instruction through student involvement in the assessment process.

Customer Reviews (4)

Portfolios for Middle School Students
The 2nd best resource I have ever found. The CD helped with rubric creation and each chapter contained
ample resources for further information.

Simply Superb!
This book redefines how teachers should use assessment FOR learning. How many of us truly use assessment FOR learning? Teaching students how to use assessment empowers them and engages them in their own learning. I LOVE this book.

Book review
Great book with lots of practical ideas to use in the classroom.Best price I could find on this book.

Took my instruction to a new level
I picked up this book at the beginning of my third year of teaching.I found exactly what I needed to advance my instruction to the next level.I developed student-friendly learning targets for each math unit.I communicated the learning targets to students and families at the beginning of the unit.Students were strongly encouraged to use the learning targets to evaluate their own learning.One student eagerly asked, "Mrs W. can I check off each learning target as I learn it?" - JUST BRILLANT!
The book is well-written and packed with suggestions and ideas.Templates are included on the CD.This book is a must-have for you teaching library! ... Read more

Product Description
In this book, Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick have assembled a collection of writings by outstanding educators who have taken up the challenge of improving assessment in their schools. They approach their task from a relatively new perspective, one informed byPeter Senge's concept of the "learning organization" and by the late W. Edwards Deming's concept of total quality management through continuous improvement of processes.

The chapter authors--all of them practicing educators--relate strategies from their districts, reflect on personal experiences with students in their classrooms and schools, and share insights they've gained in working to create a renaissance in assessment. In doing so, they describe how assessment is related to many of the practices advocated by Senge and Deming:

- Bringing congruence and integrity to organizational goals and assessments through systems thinking.
- Using feedback spirals to promote continual learning.
- Changing existing mental models for the role of assessment in schools.
- Stating purposes and outcomes in the form of a shared vision.
- Using team building and critical friends as resources for continual learning.
- Identifying a developmental continuum that helps teachers and learners set milestones along the pathways to personal mastery.

This book not only provides practical examples of ways to immediately improve assessment in your own classroom, school, or district, it also explains the theories on which you can build your own effort to continually improve assessment processes--and thus make your school a true learning organization. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

decided not to sell
I am upset with this company for not being able to ship this item.They cancelled my order.

Worthwhile to good administrators and teacher leaders.
The problem with modern day educationalists is that the field is so bereft of any true intellectual prowess authors feel they must write with arcane wording so as to bolster their own egos.For instance, Chapter one is titled "Systems Thinking: Interactive Assessment in Holonomous Organizations."Huh?Do they editors actually believe using `holonomous' in a title will connect them to their readers?This is the most egregious example, but be warned, the text, a collection of essays introduced by Costa and Kallick, is peppered with such muddled wording it makes the readings nearly useless to the teaching practitioner.I have the feeling that the editors are more concerned with how they are perceived by their peers than whether they deliver meaningful material to education students.Teachers will get the feeling that Costa and Kallick are, in typical PhD stereotyping, too far removed from the classroom environment.The essays following the editors' introductions are hit-and-miss yet will resonate in some ways; these essays generally give practical examples from teachers and principals for the themes the editors have provided.In all, college professors will be quite enamored with the text, yet teachers will find the writing style pompous and not genuine. ... Read more

Product Description
Culture permeates human activity the world over. In today’s technological "global village," people from very different cultures are interacting more closely and more often than ever—making it critical for clinicians to understand and incorporate cultural dimensions into their daily practices.

This volume offers a contemporary pragmatic understanding of how culture is inextricably intertwined with mental health and mental illness.

In Chapter 1, the 17-member GAP Committee on Cultural Psychiatry begins by discussing the history (particularly within the last two decades) and scope of culture in clinical psychiatry.

In Chapter 2, the authors describe 11 selected cultural variables that strongly influence clinical work: ethnic identity, race, gender and sexual orientations, age, religion, migration and country of origin, socioeconomic status, acculturation and acculturative processes, language, dietary influences, and education.

In Chapter 3, the authors present a brief history and detailed analysis of the Cultural Formulation, the newest instrument for ensuring thorough clinical assessments, explaining its clinical use based on DSM-IV guidelines.

In Chapter 4, the authors integrate the 11 cultural variables described in Chapter 2 with the use of the Cultural Formulation described in Chapter 3, producing an extraordinary cross-section of case vignettes:

• How the son of Irish Catholic immigrants struggles to reconcile old-country traditions with life in modern American society
• The sometimes painful and always complex process and outcomes of acculturation for a Pakistani Muslim family who had come to the United States for only a temporary period but ended up staying permanently
• Diagnosing social phobia in an Asian American, whose traditional reticence must be viewed within the context of Asian culture
• Loss of country of origin and family ties as catalysts leading to significant behavioral changes and severe depressive symptoms in an African immigrant tribesman from Kenya and the cultural context of his recovery
• The interplay of gender, age, and religion with developmental issues, personality organization, and symptom development for a "good Catholic girl"
• The existential, interpersonal, and clinical experiences of a Protestant minister from predominantly Catholic Ecuador, who came to the United States as pastor of an Hispanic church in a predominantly white city

Enhanced by a detailed index, this powerful work meets the significant—and rapidly growing—need for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals to understand the role of culture in psychiatry and to integrate this knowledge into their practice so that they can provide the most comprehensive and useful care to their patients. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A step in the right direction!
The book is informative and describes in greater detail a culturally sensitive approach to assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of the individual. It provides case examples which help to illustrate how the practices are implemented. It is a good resource for the culturally sensitive clinician.

DSM-IV Outline for Cultural Formulation casebook
"Cultural Assessment in Clinical Psychiatry" (2001), formulated by the Committee on Cultural Psychiatry of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP), focuses on describing and applying the DSM-IV Outline for Cultural Formulation, which is a concise clinical tool that appears in Appendix I. The five sections include: 1) Cultural Identity of the Individual; 2) Cultural Explanations of Illness; 3) Cultural Stressors and Supports; 4) Cultural Elements of the Relationship between the Clinician and the Individual; and 5) Overall Cultural Assessment for Differential Diagnosis and Treatment Planning. Six detailed clinical cases from diverse cultures illustrate how the use of the Outline brings sociocultural issues to bear on making more accurate diagnoses and responding with culturally competent treatment plans. The 2007 ACGME accreditation standards for psychiatry residency training programs includes a requirement for didactic curriculum on "use of case formulation that includes neurobiological, phenomenological, psychological, and sociocultural issues involved in the diagnosis and management of cases." This book, along with the Clinical Manual of Cultural Psychiatry, provides essential information about how to incorporate "sociocultural issues" in a case formulation. (As a member of the GAP Committee on Cultural Psychiatry since 1995, I am a co-author of the book,but I have no financial interest). ... Read more

Product Description
U.S. public schools are responsible for educating large numbers of English language learners and students with disabilities. This book considers policies for including students with disabilities and English language learners in assessment programs. It also examines the research findings on testing accommodations and their effect on test performance. "Keeping Score for All" discusses the comparability of states policies with each other and with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) policies and explores the impact of these differences on the interpretations of NAEP results. The book presents a critical review of the research literature and makes suggestions for future research to evaluate the validity of test scores obtained under accommodated conditions. The book concludes by proposing a new framework for conceptualizing accommodations. This framework would be useful both for policymakers, test designers, and practitioners in determining appropriate accommodations for specific assessments and for researchers in planning validity studies. ... Read more

Product Description
This collection--taken from the International Performance Assessment System (IPAS) developed by the Center for Performance Assessment--responds to teachers' needs for effective standards-based classroom assessments and provides teachers with practical tips and timesaving tools. The middle school edition targets grades 6-8, and each assessment in this book is linked with National Standards. ... Read more