The equating of tests is an essential process in high-stakes, large-scale testing conducted over multiple forms or administrations. By adjusting for differences in difficulty and placing scores from different administrations of a test on a common scale, equating allows scores from these different forms and administrations to be directly compared…

The synthetic function is a weighted average of the identity (the linking function for forms that are known to be completely parallel) and a traditional equating method. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the benefits of the synthetic function on small-sample equating using various real data sets gathered from different…

This article proposes that sampling design effects have potentially huge unrecognized impacts on the results reported by large-scale district and state assessments in the United States. When design effects are unrecognized and unaccounted for they lead to underestimating the sampling error in item and test statistics. Underestimating the sampling…

Linking scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to statewide test results was studied. Results based on an equipercentile procedure suggest that such a link does not provide precise information. Information from a linking study should be limited to rough estimates of students in each NAEP achievement level. (SLD)

The adequacy of linking statewide standardized test results to the National Assessment of Educational Progress by using equipercentile equating procedures was investigated using statewide mathematics data from four states. Results suggest that the linkings are not sufficiently trustworthy to make comparisons based on the tails of the distribution.…