The multistage testing (MST) design has been gaining attention and popularity in educational assessments. For testing programs that have small test-taker samples, it is challenging to calibrate new items to replenish the item pool. In the current research, we used the item pools from an operational MST program to illustrate how research studies…

Classroom quality measures, such as the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, Revised (ECERS-R), are widely used in research, practice, and policy. Increasingly, these uses have been for purposes not originally intended, such as contributing to consequential policy decisions. The current study adds to the recent evidence of problems with the…

Purpose: Instructional leadership has assumed steadily increasing importance within the general role set of principals over the past 60 years. One persisting finding within this corpus of studies concerns the consistently higher ratings obtained by female principals on instructional leadership when compared with their male counterparts. This…

This article discusses the five studies included in this issue. Each article addressed the same topic, population invariance of equating. They all used data from major standardized testing programs, and they all used essentially the same statistics to evaluate their results, namely, the root mean square difference and root expected mean square…

This paper summarizes some of the basic concepts in test equating. Various types of equating methods, as well as data collection designs, are outlined, with attempts to provide insight into preferred methods and techniques. Test equating describes a group of methods that enable test constructors and users to compare scores from two different forms…

Examines item-response theory (IRT), which seeks to model the way in which latent psychological constructs manifest themselves in terms of observable item responses. Provides an overview of the most popular IRT models and contrasts them with the techniques used in classical test theory. Results highlight several IRT advantages. (Author/GCP)

Criteria used in the equating process proposed in the literature are reviewed. The discussion begins by examining how equating is defined. The controversy over the best criterion, the utility of some, and whether a criterion is needed at all means that much work needs to be done in this area. (SLD)

Studies of the mathematics assessments of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are summarized. One study found that omit rates for NAEP test items were higher for African Americans and Hispanics than for whites. The other found that descriptions and examples for the 1992 mathematics achievement levels were misleading. (SLD)