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This study analyzes Los Angeles City College (LACC) records for a six-semester period of students who took the Guidance Examination in fall 1970 and scored in the lowest quintile on both the vocabulary and reading sections of the examination. This score indicated that their reading level was at the eighth-grade level or lower. The students were sent postcards recommending that they enroll in Developmental Communications on the basis of their examination score. Persistence rates and academic statistics indicated that many of these students were assisted by the "remedial" programs and were successful in college. Five tables and two figures provide the study data. (DB)

The elementary INFOE (Information Needed For Occupational Exploration) study for grades 4-6 was conducted to assess the feasibility of establishing an articulated program of career information for students at the elementary school level. Background for the study and the development of the materials is discussed. The major guideline for the INFOE materials was to provide students at the elementary level with basic information on career clusters and general information on specific job titles through a service that reproduced career briefs on microfilm aperture cards introducing a cluster and describing specific job titles. The design and conduct of the study is reviewed. The entire package of 15 INFOE clusters was given to students at each grade level for a given period of time. Teachers completed a 10-item questionnaire, and students were pretested and posttested with a career awareness test. The data and the overall favorable responses for each grade level are presented in tabular form. The findings, conclusions, and recommendations suggest revision on the fourth grade level, division of clusters for each grade level, and additional research regarding alternative materials. A list of schools involved in the study and the career awareness instrument are appended. (JB)

Recent research results strongly suggest that the theoretical problems of change measures have limited practical significance for measuring individual growth, and it is important to determine whether this is also the case for measuring school impact. Accordingly, in this study artifical data were used to assess the correlation between several estimates of average student change in various schools and the "true" impact of the same schools. Because it seems desirable for artificial data to resemble real data, the computer procedure was designed to reproduce selected aspects of the Educational Testing Service Growth Study and of the Project TALENT study of high schools in the U.S. Results indicate that all estimates involving pretest-posttest differences measure school impact with reasonable accuracy. It is important to measure change over the entire course of learning, however, and not just over the later stages of learning. The correlations between change scores and other school characteristics reflect with reasonable accuracy the relationships between those characteristics and impact, but will be large only when the underlying relationships are substantial. Simple gain scores measure the true situation about as accurately as other change estimates, are easier to compute, and probably are more meaningful to nonresearchers. (Author/JM)

The current status of state testing programs is assessed drawing primarily on information provided by the Educational Testing Service publication, "State Testing Programs, 1973 Revision." Increases in state operated programs are indicated and are probably due to an increase in federal money for testing purposes. Because of possible confusion over the differences between a state testing program, a state assessment program, and a state testing service, some explanation is given as to the properties of each. A history of state testing programs is outlined, and new directions for such programs are proposed. Criterion-referenced and norm-referenced testing is contrasted, and the advantages and limitations of criterion-referenced tests are indicated. The problem of evaluating affective educational outcomes is explored and may be explained by the very limited role of noncognitive tests in state testing programs. The relation between the purposes of testing and the time of year the tests are given is discussed, and this timing is seen to affect the extent to which a particular purpose is served well or poorly. As to the type of test that should be given, standardized tests and tailor-made tests are compared, and their advantages and limitations are discussed. (RC)

The four parts of this report are: (1) the purposes of evaluation and reporting; (2) relationship to educational philosophy and methods of teaching, including historical development, present reporting practice and criticisms of these practices, and alternatives to conventional grading; (3) the best way to report student achievement; and (4) evaluation to improve instruction, with comments on standardized tests, criterion-referenced tests, self-evaluation, and promising trends in evaluation. (RC)

A computer simulation procedure was developed to reproduce the overall pattern of results obtained in the Educational Testing Service Growth Study. Then simulated data for seven sets of 10,000 to 15,000 cases were analyzed, and findings compared on the basis of correlations between estimated and true growth scores. Findings showed that growth was estimated more accurately by the difference between pretest and posttest scores. The measure was said to be accurate and easier to compute, and meaningful to the outsider. It was concluded that more complex assessment procedures should not be used until better results can be drawn. (Author/SK)

In October, 1971, AIMLO (Auto-Instructional Media for Library Orientation) was initiated at Colorado State University Libraries. AIMLO is an innovative approach to undergraduate library instruction, providing on-demand, point-of-use programs about three basic library tools: periodical indexes, the card catalog, and U.S. government documents. To keep student usage of AIMLO on a strictly voluntary basis, three unobtrusive evaluation techniques were initially tried: counters on the machines to record use totals, optional questionnaires, and a telephone survey. When these results proved insufficient, it was decided to evaluate AIMLO instruction by means of a library use quiz, administered to three sections of an introductory psychology course in the fall of 1973. Section one of the class was encouraged to use AIMLO for library orientation, section two was given printed guides, and section three received no library instruction. One week later, the unannounced quiz was administered. Fifty-two percent of the 502 students had made no use of library instruction and only 15 percent had made any use of the machines. Since the students using AIMLO scored high on the quiz in comparison to all other groups, continuation of the program was recommended. Appendixes include the questionnaires, the quiz, and the printed library guides. (SL)

This project is concerned with the development and implementation of some new statistical techniques that will facilitate a continuing input of information about the student to the instructional manager so that individualization of instruction can be managed effectively. The source of this informational input is typically a short criterion-referenced test specific to one or more behavioral objectives being taught. The fundamental issue is one of test length. Part I of this project is a brief and broad structuring of the problem and work that has been done to solve it. Part II consists of a broad overview of the project in which each prepared paper is concisely stated. Part III discusses these papers and the new techniques and methods provided by each paper. The papers are included in four appendices; some are not available here due to copyrights but a journal reference is given. The four papers in Appendix I are directly concerned with the implementation of new methods within individually Prescribed Instruction. Appendix II deals with possible further developments in decision-theory application. Appendix III treats the core-mathematical theory underlying the proposed applications, and Appendix IV deals with the computer problems involved in such applications. (RC)

Ohio's Statewide Needs Assessment is designed to provide baseline data about students' learning in cognitive areas. Over several years, students at various grade levels will be assessed. The areas to be assessed, as well as the grades of the students to be assessed, will be considered and advised upon by the ESEA Title III State Advisory Council. The council recommended that for the first year of assessment, only reading be assessed at grade twelve. The reading assessment instrument to be used in this first year contains items that assess those objectives thought by reading specialists in the Ohio Department of Education to be the most important. It will be administered to only a sample of Ohio twelfth graders by school personnel. Confidence intervals for each item on the instrument will be calculated in order to predict student performance. After the data from the assessment have been analyzed, reports presenting and explaining the results will be given. Regional meetings may be held throughout the state to provide further explanation of assessment results, while interpretations and implications of Title III are discussed. (Author/BJG)

Two Basic Skill Centers were set up in 1969 to help inner city students improve their reading skills. The centers were supported mainly by the Minneapolis Public Schools although ESEA Title I funds provided teacher aides. This report covers the fifth year's operation of the project. Substantial changes made in the centers' operations are described. The goals of the program included remediation of subskill weaknesses, achievement of functional reading levels, and raising the rate of reading growth of children in Target Area schools who were one or more years below grade level in reading. Individualized instruction was provided for 604 students from grades 4-9 from 23 schools. A multimedia approach was used which included programs used in a variety of teaching machines as well as individual instruction in related classrooms. The students, who came from Title I Target Area schools, made grade equivalent gains well above what would have been expected for average children working at the reading levels of the Gates-MacGinitie and Stanford Primary Achievement tests which were the measuring instruments. About 70 percent of the students made grade equivalent gains on the Gates Comprehension test over those expected for the pre-posttest span of six months. Two thirds of the pupils made such gains on the Stanford Word Study skills tests. (Author/RC)

The purpose of the present study was to empirically investigate the stability and accuracy of one suggested method for matching test difficulty to examinee ability level. Students' answers to traditional classroom tests were rescored by computer as if the examinations had been flexilevel tests. The scores thus obtained were found to correlate highly with the traditional test scores (0.8994 to 0.9478), thereby indicating that flexilevel test scores are sufficiently stable and accurate to allow their use for classroom evaluation purposes. (Author)

The report describes an elementary grade level career awareness program which was organized around four open-spaced non-graded learning centers: a kindergarten and three other learning centers in which students stayed for two-year periods to explore the 15 career clusters identified by the U.S. Office of Education. Each learning center used a single career theme (restaurant, library, hospital) as the foundation of the career program. The results of pre- and post-Knowledge of Careers tests administered to randomly selected students indicated that post-test mean scores were higher on all program levels, especially at lower levels, than the pre-test means. An evaluation of the program operation based on a Likert-type questionnaire administered to the teaching staff indicated their favorable perceptions of each aspect of the program which was assessed (for example, program improvement, program effectiveness, student attitudes, program objectives, program implementation, and program administration). The report concludes with eight recommendations for improving the program. Two appendixes include the Knowledge of Careers Tests by levels and the teacher questionnaire. (JR)

The purpose of this study was to develop a screening procedure for undergraduate pilot training (UPT). This procedure was based upon the use of ground-based instrument trainers in which UPT candidates, naive to flying, were evaluated in their performance of job sample tasks; i.e., basic instrument flying. Training and testing sessions were conducted in a highly standardized and tightly controlled environment. Student performance was scored using only objective measures of aircraft control and systems management. The job sample approach proved highly successful in predicting student performance in the T-37 phase of UPT. Attrition, due to causes other than a lack of flying skill, was not satisfactorily predicted by this approach. Two-thirds of the document consists of eight appendixes: T-40 program guide excerpts, T-40 instrument procedures excerpts, test forms and scoring excerpts, T-37 phase summary data, forward selection prediction equations for T-37 phase, pass-fail summary data, forward selection prediction equations for pass-fail, and proposed T-40 screening program guide. (Author/BP)

Designed to complete a cycle begun in 1946, the 1950 Service-Wide Testing Program examined: the progress and achievement made by American Indian students in various educational situations, and the factors thought to affect their educational development. Tests were administered to all students in grades 8 and 12 enrolled in day, mission, public, nonreservation boarding, and reservation boarding schools located in nine geographic areas--Alaska, Dakota, Mountain, Navajo, Oklahoma, Pacific, Pueblo, Southeast, and Southwest. The tests included: Pressey Diagnostic Reading, Grades 3-9, Form A; Arithmetic-Factor Abilities, Form USIS--FA-A-1-47; Free Writing Test, Form C, USIS--FWA-C-48; Use of Resources--USIS-3-46; Pressey English, Grades 5-8; Gates Basic Reading, Grades 3-8; Orleans Arithmetic Computation, Form I, Grades 3-8; and Health and Safety--USIS-HS-A-47. These tests were not all administered in both grades. The mean, standard deviation, plus one standard deviation, and minus one standard deviation were calculated for 360 distributions. Data were also obtained on the student's degree of Indian blood, language spoken at home, home stability, place of residence, kinds of friends, late entrance to school, size of school attended, regularity of school attendance, and academic ambition. It was found that as the cultural and educational backgrounds of Indian children became more like those of white children in the public schools, the educational achievement of Indian children matched that of white children more closely. (NQ)