A critical aspect of the development of culturally relevant classroom assessments is the design of tasks that affirm students' racial and ethnic identities and community cultural practices. This paper describes the process we followed to build a shared understanding of what culturally relevant assessments are, to pursue ways of bringing more…

The identification of rapid guessing is important to promote the validity of achievement test scores, particularly with low-stakes tests. Effective methods for identifying rapid guesses require reliable threshold methods that are also aligned with test taker behavior. Although several common threshold methods are based on rapid guessing response…

This article provides a brief introduction to the set of four articles in the special issue. To provide a foundation for the issue, key terms are defined, a brief historical overview of validity is provided, and a description of several different validation approaches used in the issue are explained. Finally, the contribution of the articles to…

Learning progressions--particularly as defined and operationalized in science education--have significant potential to inform teachers' formative assessment practices. In this overview article, I lay out an argument for this potential, starting from definitions for "formative assessment practices" and "learning progressions"…

The cornerstone of evidence-centered assessment design (ECD) is an evidentiary argument that requires that each target of measurement (e.g., learning goal) for an assessment be expressed as a "claim" to be made about an examinee that is relevant to the specific purpose and audience(s) for the assessment. The "observable evidence" required to…

A simultaneous equating of four new test forms to each other and to one previous form was accomplished through a complex design incorporating seven separate equating links. Each new form was linked to the reference form by four different paths, and each path produced a different score conversion. The procedure used to resolve these inconsistencies…

The report, "Evaluation of the National Assessment of Educational Progress", provides a number of recommendations for addressing validity concerns about NAEP. This article identifies actions that could be taken by the Congress, the National Center for Education Statistics, and the National Assessment Governing Board--which share responsibility for…

The idea that formative assessments embedded in a curriculum could help guide teachers toward better instructional practices that lead to greater student learning has taken center stage in science assessment research. In order to embed formative assessments in a curriculum, curriculum developers and assessment specialists should collaborate to…

Describes the principles that guided the creation and implementation of a system of embedded assessments, the Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research System (BEAR). The assessment system builds on methodological advances in alternative assessment. Discusses how the application of the principles generates the component parts of the system. (SLD)

With the exception of the procedures developed by Porter and colleagues (Porter, 2002), other methods of defining and measuring alignment are essentially limited to alignment between tests and standards. Porter's procedures have been generalized to investigating the alignment between content standards, tests, textbooks, and even classroom…

Developmental (vertical) scales are often constructed for subject areas such as reading and mathematics that are taught continuously in elementary schools. In other subjects such as science, and across a wider grade span, such scales are hard to justify. For tracking student progress and school accountability (including the No Child Left Behind…

This project evaluated the relationship between assessment practices and achievement and the mediating roles of student self-efficacy and effort. In part, this was based on a framework proposed by Brookhart (1997). The United States portion of the Third International Math and Science Study was used to estimate these relationships. Several student…

The Educational Resources Information Center Clearinghouse on Tests, Measurement, and Evaluation (ERIC/TME) provides researchers and practitioners with bibliographic citations for journal articles, conference papers, and reports on all aspects of educational testing, evaluation, and learning theory. The ERIC system and the ERIC/TME Clearinghouse…