Regional Service Centers in Texas seek to retrain teachers for new subjects, help administrators, process test scores, educate paraprofessionals, appraise students, establish vocational education and help with curriculum and instruction. (Author/AF)

Although there is not much data on microteaching because it has been in use only nine years, the available data indicates that it is very effective for teacher training courses. Bibliography. (AF)

Two fundamental attitudes potential teachers should learn are: 1) To accept change and 2) To realize that they must be continually learning along with their students and the world. (AF)

According to the author, the black student has a right to be educated properly for the society in which he lives. If necessary, the teacher should help the student learn to cope with the real competition in the world and strive to raise the student's conduct standards. (AF)

Supervisors should be responsible for long-range instructional planning, monitoring planned changes in programs, program evaluation and experimentation of new instructional ways. (Author/AF)

Teachers are responsible for instilling in their students good attitudes toward all races. (AF)

Presents an interim vision of a performance assessment model for middle schools that is built on a culture of high expectations, internal accountability, and rites of passage expressed in student portfolios. Despite problems with portfolio work, all students and teachers must have ongoing experience with demanding tasks and high standards. Test…

The desire for students to graduate with more than basic skills has fueled interest in performance assessment methods such as essay writing, group science experiments, or portfolio preparation. Officials in Vermont, California, Kentucky, Maryland, and other states are betting that performance assessments may prove as powerful a classroom influence…

A recent study compared hands-on scientific inquiry assessment to assessments involving lab notebooks, computer simulations, short-answer paper-and-pencil problems, and multiple-choice questions. Creating high quality performance assessments is a costly, time-consuming process requiring considerable scientific and technological know-how. Improved…

Offers some proven design tips, tools, and criteria for fashioning assessment tasks that are more enticing, feasible, and defensible. Typical tests tend to overassess student "knowledge" and underassess student "know-how with knowledge." Test designers should create authentic simulations rich in contextual detail, devise meaningful tasks, and…

Assessment reforms might fail because high stakes will be attached to them too soon, judgments will be unreliable, and lawsuits will occur. Educators need to consider technical issues including score reliability, task validity, portfolio sampling, and generalizability problems. U.S. schools would improve considerably if national Advanced Placement…

As schools develop new curriculum and assessment models, they will need to answer four questions: What do we want students to know and be able to do? What will count as acceptable performance? How can we ensure expert judgments? How can we provide feedback? Answering these questions will help schools and teachers connect teaching, learning,…

Uses two direct writing assignments to show that performance assessment denotes the kind of student response to be examined, whereas authentic assessment denotes assessment context. Although not all performance assessments are authentic, it is difficult to imagine an authentic assessment that would not also be a performance assessment. Educators…

Effective assessment of mathematical problem solving requires more than an examination of student answers. Students tend to make calculations without explanations. Teachers need to analyze their processes and get students to communicate their thinking. This article suggests ways to understand students' thinking, their conceptions, their…

When commercially available tests failed to match their whole-language instructional practices, resource teachers in a Canadian school district developed their own instrument. Assembled over a five-year period, the Multi-Layered Assessment Package (MAP) is a set of procedures accompanied by suggested books, transcripts, and retelling and recording…