Appraisal of results in the Thirty Schools was not limited to written examinations. As the Director of Evaluation states,

. . . Any device which provides valid evidence regarding the progress of students toward educational objectives is appropriate. As a matter of practice, most programs of appraisal have been limited to written examinations or paper-and-pencil tests of some type. Perhaps this has been due to the greater ease with which written examinations can be given and the results summarized. However, a consideration of the kinds of objectives formulated for general education makes clear that written examinations are not likely to provide an adequate appraisal for all of these objectives. A written test may be a valid measure of information recalled and ideas remembered. In many cases, too, the student's skill in writing and in mathematics may be shown by written tests, and it is also true that various techniques of thinking may be evidenced through more novel types of written test materials. On the other hand, evidence regarding the improvement of health practices, regarding better personal-social adjustment of students, regarding interests and attitudes, may require a milch wider repertoire of appraisal technique. This assumption emphasizes the wider range of techniques which may be used in evaluation such as observational records, anecdotal records, questionnaires, interviews, check lists, records of activities, products made, and the like. The selection of evaluation techniques should be made in terms of the appropriateness of that technique for the kind of behavior to be appraised. ²

It was neither desirable nor possible for the Evaluation Staff to devise tests for all kinds of new courses and units developed by the schools. They constructed instruments of appraisal in areas of most common concern. Moreover, the Staff rendered another service equally important: they taught hundreds of teachers how to devise their own tests. The effect of a unique unit of work, designed to bring about certain changes in students, should be measured by a test specifically made for that situation. Therefore, teachers were assisted in Workshops, at evaluation headquarters, and in their own schools in the techniques of test construction, in the use of instruments of evaluation, and in the interpretation of results.

The ways in which the schools used the contributions of the Evaluation Staff and the results of such use are recorded in Volumes III and V of this Report. It should be reported here that, to a greater or less extent, the schools in the Study have now developed comprehensive programs of evaluation. Perhaps no school has yet found ways of securing all the knowledge it should have concerning the effects of its efforts. However, every participating school now attempts to appraise its own work more intelligently and comprehensively than it did when the Study began. Freedom from college requirements has definited, increased each school's sense of responsibility for knowing tile consequences of its endeavors.

In the Thirty Schools evaluation and teaching belong together. They react upon each other continuously. Step by step in the process of learning, the teacher and student measure the distance traveled, learn just where the student is and how far he has to go to reach the desired goal. If, as in many of the Thirty Schools, the student has shared with the teacher in determining objectives and planning ]low to attain them, he is just as eager as the teacher to learn what progress he has made. Teacher and students together plan the work, carry it through, and test results. In bringing teaching and evaluation into closer co-operation the Evaluation Staff has rendered the Thirty Schools distinctly valuable service. In developing instruments of evaluation in areas previously neglected, they have made an important contribution to progress, not only ill the participating schools, but in schools everywhere.

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