International assessments inform education policy debates, yet little is known about their floor effects: To what extent do they fail to differentiate between the lowest performers, and what are the implications of this? TIMSS, SACMEQ, and LLECE data are analyzed to answer this question. In TIMSS, floor effects have been reduced through the…

GCSE examinations (taken by students aged 16 years in England) are not intended to be speeded (i.e. to be partly a test of how quickly students can answer questions). However, there has been little research exploring this. The aim of this research was to explore the speededness of past GCSE written examinations, using only the data from scored…

This test review focuses on the current version (2009) of [Chinese characters omitted] (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi), literally translated as the Chinese Language Proficiency Test and abbreviated as HSK. Tailored to non-native speakers of the Chinese language, this test consists of six proficiency levels (Levels 1 and 2 as beginners, Levels 3 and 4 as…

ACT requested assistance from the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment (Center for Assessment) to investigate declines of scores for states administering the ACT to its 11th grade students in 2018. This request emerged from conversations among state leaders, the Center for Assessment, and ACT in trying to understand the…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) -- often called "The Nation's Report Card" -- is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what students in public and private schools in the United States know and can do in various subjects and has provided policy makers and the public with invaluable…

The Common Core State Standards represent an exciting step forward for California, and for the nation as a whole, in supporting instruction that can better prepare students for college and career success. Concurrent with the transition to the new standards, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), of which California is a governing…

There have been calls in the literature for changes to assessment practices in higher education, to increase flexibility and give learners more control over the assessment process. This article explores the possibilities of allowing student choice in the format used to present their work, as a starting point for changing assessment, based on…

In this article, the author describes his project to take every standardized exam English majors students take. During the summer and fall semesters of 2012, the author signed up for and took the GRE General Test, the Praxis Content Area Exam (English Language, Literature, and Composition: Content Knowledge), the Senior Major Field Tests in…

Over the past twenty years in performance testing a specific item type with distinguishing characteristics has arisen time and time again. It's been invented independently by dozens of test development teams. And yet this item type is not recognized in the research literature. This article is an invitation to investigate the item type, evaluate…

In this study we examined variations of the nonequivalent groups equating design for tests containing both multiple-choice (MC) and constructed-response (CR) items to determine which design was most effective in producing equivalent scores across the two tests to be equated. Using data from a large-scale exam, this study investigated the use of…

Spirituality and religiousness have long been associated with physical and mental health. The scientific treatment of religiosity as a multi-dimensional phenomenon is well established, especially in relation to chemical dependence treatment. Indeed, over 100 instruments are available for measuring various dimensions of religiosity. The more recent…

This technical report provides an overview of the New York State Alternate Assessment (NYSAA), including a description of the purpose of the NYSAA, the processes utilized to develop and implement the NYSAA program, and Stakeholder involvement in those processes. The purpose of this report is to document the technical aspects of the 2013-14 NYSAA.…

Effects of numbers of experts (NOEs) and common items (CIs) on the scaling of cutting scores from expert judgments were studied for 11,917 physicians taking 2 forms of a medical specialty examination. Increasing NOEs and CIs reduced error; beyond 5 experts and 25 CIs, error differences were small. (SLD)

The MDT multi-digit technique, a development in testing technology, is described; and its application to science classrooms is discussed. Some actual materials for use in a cell biology class are included. The primary characteristic of an MDT multi-digit test is a long list of possible responses, with each term marked with a three-digit number…

Determining whether score distributions differ on two or more test forms administered to samples of examinees from a single population is explored using three statistical tests using loglinear models. Examples are presented of applying tests of distribution differences to decide if equating is needed for alternative forms of a test. (SLD)