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Perceptions of the Arkansas Student Assessment Program by State Legislators, Superintendents and Teachers

The problem of this study was to compare the perceptions o£ Kansas state legislators, superintendents, and teachers toward the Arkansas Student Assessment Program. The purpose was to generate data which would benefit educational planners in Arkansas. Hypotheses which focused on current national issues in the statewide testing movement and on issues pertinent to the Arkansas program were constructed, and a questionnaire was developed to test the hypotheses. The questionnaire was mailed to all Arkansas state legislators and to the superintendent and a fourth-grade teacher in 100 randomly selected Arkansas school districts. Responses were received selected Arkansas school districts. 70 percent of superintendent from 50 percent of legislators, 70 per dents, and 74 per cent of teachers. The chi-square statistic was applied to individual questions in test for significance of difference between the groups, the Kruskal-Wallace one-way analysis of variance by ranks was applied to the hypotheses to test for significant differences between groups. In examining individual questions relating to legislators, superintendents, and teachers, significant differences were found on twenty three of the forty items on the questionnaire. A significant difference was found on each of the seven hypotheses, as follows: (1) superintendents and teachers understand the program better than legislators, (2, superintendents and teachers view the program as more adequate than legislators, (3) legislators and superintendents view the program as more fair than teachers; (4) superintendents and teachers are more positive than legislators concerning the use of the results; (5, legislators and superintendents more than teachers feel that the program has a greater impact; (6) legislators and superintendents are more positive about the public relations aspect of the testing program than are teachers; and (7) all three groups differ concerning improvements needed in the program.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc332342
Date08 1900
CreatorsHigginbotham, Ed
ContributorsWatson, Hoyt F., Halstead, Francis E., 1930-, McCallon, Earl L.
PublisherNorth Texas State University
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
Formatxi, 208 leaves, Text
CoverageUnited States - Arkansas
RightsPublic, Higginbotham, Ed, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

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