Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) is committed to providing partners with useful tools to help make inferences from Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) interim assessment scores. One important tool is the concordance table between MAP and state summative assessments. Concordance tables have been used for decades to relate scores on…

The first step in the Validity and Reliability Study summarizes the history and purpose of California's quality rating and improvement system (QRIS), reviews findings from other QRIS evaluation studies, and describes the approach to validating the system in California. The majority of this report focuses on providing context for the California…

Student responses to the West Virginia Educational Standards Test (WESTEST) 2 Online Writing Assessment are scored by a computer-scoring engine. The scoring method is not widely understood among educators, and there exists a misperception that it is not comparable to hand scoring. To address these issues, the West Virginia Department of Education…

A table is provided giving observed difference frequencies for caregiver versus teacher ratings of children on the Child Behavior Checklist and Teacher's Report Form Internalizing, Externalizing, and Total Problems scales per the original normative samples. The table permits accurate evaluation of the empirical rarity of specific cross-informant…

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…

The Test of Spoken English (TSE) is an internationally administered instrument for assessing nonnative speakers' proficiency in speaking English. The research foundation of the TSE examination described in its manual refers to two sources of variation other than the achievement being measured: interrater reliability and internal consistency.…

Procedures are described for studying the reliability of decisions based on specific passing scores with tests made up of discrete items and designed to measure continuous rather than categorical traits. These procedures are based on the estimation of the joint distribution of true scores and observed scores. (CTM)

Previous studies have indicated that the reliability of test scores composed of testlets might be overestimated by conventional item-based reliability estimation methods (R. Thorndike, 1953; A. Anastasi, 1988; S. Sireci, D. Thissen, and H. Wainer, 1991; H. Wainer and D. Thissen, 1996). This study used generalizability theory to investigate the…

Current methods of obtaining reliability coefficients for mastery tests are laborious from a practitioner's perspective. Some methods require two test administrations; while others require access to computer facilities and/or advanced measurement and statistical procedures. This report provides tables from which practitioners can read such…

The purpose of the study was to compare reliability estimates for a test composed of stimulus-dependent testlets as derived from item scores, testlet scores, and under the univariate generalizability theory and multivariate generalizability theory designs, as well as to determine the influence of the number of testlets and the number of items per…

Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) assessments are criterion-referenced performance tests designed, developed, and implemented by the Maryland State Department of Education in collaboration with classroom teachers and other Maryland educators. MSPAP is the major strategy for implementing Maryland's educational reform…

Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) assessments are criterion-referenced performance tests designed, developed, and implemented by the Maryland State Department of Education in collaboration with classroom teachers and other Maryland educators. MSPAP is the major strategy for implementing Maryland's educational reform…

Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) assessments are criterion-referenced performance tests designed, developed, and implemented by the Maryland State Department of Education in collaboration with classroom teachers and other Maryland educators. MSPAP is the major strategy for implementing Maryland's educational reform…

The New Standards Project (NSP) is an effort to create a state- and district-based assessment and professional development system to serve as a catalyst for major educational reform. As part of a professional development strategy tied to assessment, 114 teachers, curriculum supervisors, and assessment directors, representing 23 states and…

The Personal Preferences Self-Description Questionnaire (PPSDQ) (B. Thompson) was developed to measure personal preferences with regard to Jungian psychological types. Instruments in this area are among the most popular measures used in education and psychology; the measures are used in matching teaching and learning styles, in individual…