Reading comprehension assessments often vary from one measure to another related to the response format required, passage length and other variables. Yet, these measures purport to assess the same skill of reading comprehension, and they are often used interchangeably. Over the last decade some reading researchers have raised concerns that the…

The landscape of undergraduate biology education has been shaped by decades of reform efforts calling for instruction to integrate core concepts and scientific skills as a means of helping students become proficient in the discipline. Assessments can be used to make inferences about how these reform efforts have translated into changes in…

Vocabulary researchers have started expanding their assessment toolbox by incorporating timed tasks and psycholinguistic instruments (e.g., priming tasks) to gain insights into lexical development (e.g., Elgort, 2011; Godfroid, 2020b; Nakata & Elgort, 2020; Vandenberghe et al., 2021). These timed sensitive and implicit word measures differ…

The purpose of this research is to provide information about the psychometric properties of technology-enhanced (TE) items and the effects these items have on the content validity of an assessment. Specifically, this research investigated the impact that the inclusion of TE items has on the construct of a mathematics test, the technical properties…

This study examined the relationship between high school exit exams and mathematical proficiency. With the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act requiring all students to be proficient in mathematics by 2014, it is imperative that high-stakes assessments accurately evaluate all aspects of student achievement, appropriately set the yardstick by which…

This dissertation study examined the reliability and validity claims of a modified version of the Spanish Modern Language Association Foreign Language Proficiency Test for Teachers and Advanced Students administered at George Mason University (GMU). The study used the 1999 computerized GMU version that was administered to 277 test-takers via…