The chapters in this online volume comprise the TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center's technical report of the methods and procedures used to develop, implement, and report the results of TIMSS 2019. There were various technical challenges because TIMSS 2019 was the initial phase of the transition to eTIMSS, with approximately half the…

The goal of this study was to gather comprehensive evidence about the alignment of the Smarter Balanced summative assessments to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Alignment of the Smarter Balanced summative assessments to the CCSS is a critical piece of evidence regarding the validity of inferences students, teachers and policy makers can…

We report results from the following three analyses of PARCC [Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers] cognitive complexity measures, based on 2014 field test item and task development and field test data. We conducted classification and regression tree analyses using 2014 PARCC field test data to do the following: (1)…

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) field tests during the spring of 2014 provided an opportunity to investigate the quality of the items, tasks, and associated stimuli. HumRRO conducted several research studies summarized in this report. Quality of test items is integral to the "Theory of Action"…

The FAIR-FS consists of computer-adaptive reading comprehension and oral language screening tasks that provide measures to track growth over time, as well as a Probability of Literacy Success (PLS) linked to grade-level performance (i.e., the 40th percentile) on the reading comprehension subtest of the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT-10) in the…

The New York City Department of Education's (DOE) annual survey of parents, students, and teachers is the largest of its kind in the United States. The DOE relies on the survey to identify schools' strengths and to target areas for improvement. School Survey scores, along with attendance, are also the only non-academic indicators used in the DOE's…

Operational testing programs employing item response theory (IRT) applications benefit from of the property of item parameter invariance whereby item parameter estimates obtained from one sample can be applied to other samples (when the underlying assumptions are satisfied). In theory, this feature allows for applications such as computer-adaptive…

A study was conducted to investigate how differential item functioning (DIF) is associated with student characteristics such as gender and ethnicity for the total group and to understand the pattern and nature of existing group differences by conducting DIF analyses separately within gender and ethnicity. The research is unique in that it…

Large gains in scores have been observed over the first years of the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System (KIRIS) program. The extent to which these gains in scores indicate that student learning improved was evaluated. Previous studies have suggested that KIRIS score gains might be appreciably inflated, something that might result…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) collects data in the form of repeated, discrete measures (test items) with hierarchical structure for both measures and subjects, that is complex by any standard. This complexity has been managed through a "divide and conquer" approach of isolating and evaluating sources of…

Achieve launched this study to help inform the decisions states are making about high school assessments by providing greater insights into the world of college admissions and placement testing. Achieve analyzed more than 2,000 questions from college admissions and placement exams to determine how these tests compare to one another and how well…

The purpose of this released exercise set is to provide easy access to some exercises from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) second mathematics assessment, conducted in 1977-78. Part 1 of the text explains NAEP's assessment procedures and describes the documentation provided for the various kinds of exercises in the set. Part…

The purpose of this simulation was to assess the improvements in estimates of standard errors that could be expected if students participating in NAEP were pre-assigned to test booklets that were adapted to their level of performance based on their state assessment scores. Students in extreme quartiles would receive one regular NAEP block and…

Because NAEP estimates of state-level achievement play an important role in the evaluation of strategies for improving the nation's educational system, it is important that these estimates have as small a standard error as possible. NAEP estimates for state-level achievement are based on measurement of the performance of a random sample of…

Simple sum procedure of the conditional PDF approach (plausiblity of distractor function) combined with the normal approach method was applied for estimating the plausibility functions of the distractors of the Level II vocabulary subtest items of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. In so doing, the normal ogive model was adopted for the correct…