The item bank (Rasch model) has serious limitations for the national assessment of subject performance: it requires agreement about the scope and organization of each school subject and about the difficulty level of each test item; and items tend to focus on factual knowledge, ignoring other desirable learning outcomes. (SJL)

This paper argues that no single measurement strategy serves all purposes and that applying methods and techniques which allow a variety of data elements to be retrieved and juxtaposed may be an investment in the future. Item response theory, Rasch model, and latent trait theory are all approaches to a single conceptual topic. An abbreviated look…