The judgmental approaches used by the Governing Board to set National Assessment of Educational Progress achievement levels have been the subject of a great deal of controversy and have sometimes led to results that were considered "unreasonable." The NCES requirement that the achievement levels be used on a trial basis and be…

Atkinson and Geiser (2009) make a strong argument for moving to a new form of college admissions testing using curriculum-based achievement tests. In making their case, however, they exaggerate the weaknesses of current tests such as the ACT and SAT by minimizing these tests' predictive utility and claiming a stronger relationship to socioeconomic…

Uses the validity framework developed by S. Messick (1995, 1996) to outline six aspects of construct validation to guide the validation of performance-based assessments: (1) content;(2) substantive; (3) structural; (4) generalizability; (5) external; and (6) consequential. (SLD)

Many states have adopted test-based accountability systems before the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 became law. NCLB has added a new dimension to test-based educational accountability systems. Features of state and NCLB accountability are discussed with an emphasis on questions of the validity of inferences that are made about school…

Almost every state has in place a state assessment and accountability system. These systems vary greatly in their characteristics but share a common global purpose of improving teaching and learning. Some of the variations in the state systems are discussed and illustrated with examples from selected states. Issues that are critical to the value…

Three professional associations, the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education, jointly adopted the new "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" in 1985. The relationship of these to earlier standards is reviewed, and implications…