As a condition of receiving federal funds, the Every Student Succeeds Act requires state education agencies to implement statewide assessments in mathematics and English language arts every year in third through eighth grade and once in ninth through 12th grade. The federal law also requires a science assessment once in each of three grade spans:…

Despite the growing popularity of diagnostic classification models (e.g., Rupp, Templin, & Henson, 2010) in educational and psychological measurement, methods for testing their absolute goodness-of-fit to real data remain relatively underdeveloped. For tests of reasonable length and for realistic sample size, full-information test statistics…

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) initiated this special study in an effort to link the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scale to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) scale so that states could compare the performance of their students with that of students in other countries. The…

This report reviews the major international and regional large-scale educational assessments, including international surveys, school-based surveys and household-based surveys. The report compares and contrasts the cognitive and contextual data collection instruments and implementation methods used by the different assessments in order to identify…

This study investigated the application of multidimensional item response theory (IRT) models to validate test structure and dimensionality. Multiple content areas or domains within a single subject often exist in large-scale achievement tests. Such areas or domains may cause multidimensionality or local item dependence, which both violate the…

Many articles and reports have reviewed, researched, and commented on international assessments from the perspective of exploring what is relevant for the United States' education systems. Researchers make claims about whether the top-performing systems have transferable practices or policies that could be applied to the United States. However,…

This article reports on reactions to the U.S. Department of Education's first time decision to sit out an international study designed to show how advanced high school students around the world measure up in math and science. Mark S. Schneider, the commissioner of the department's National Center for Education Statistics, which normally takes the…

This booklet contains released test items from the spring 2000 administration of the eighth grade mathematics and science tests of the Colorado Student Assessment Program. Items are released with the correct answers, and the scoring guide is included for selections from the constructed response portion of the science test. (SLD)

The North Carolina End-of-Course Testing Program was established to provide student, school, and school system information about achievement in high school courses. Approximately 83.4 percent of the 77,154 students who took the biology test were in the tenth grade. Students taking biology in the ninth grade (8.3 percent) were on an accelerated…

In this answer booklet, students record their answers to the practice test items for the Ohio Proficiency Tests for grade 6. The practice tests represent the subject tests for writing, reading, mathematics, citizenship, and science. The writing tests allow space for essays based on writing prompts. The items from the other tests are in…

This booklet contains the practice tests for the fourth-grade Ohio Proficiency Tests. The work students do on these tests helps the teacher know how well the student understands the subjects of reading, writing, mathematics, citizenship, and science. The writing test consists of two writing tasks. The other tests are made up of multiple choice,…

This practice test for the Ohio Ninth-grade Proficiency Tests consists of items similar to those that appear on the proficiency test. The writing section contains a prompt that asks the student to write about a hero or heroine. The reading test contains questions based on four reading selections and other reading skill questions not based on a…

This score interpretation guide is designed to help administrators and classroom teachers understand the scores and scales of the 1994 and Beyond Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP). MSPAP scale scores indicate a school's level of performance in the content areas of reading, writing, language usage, mathematics, science, and…

How two students with the same number-correct score, calculated by dramatically different patterns of responses, can achieve the same ability estimate is demonstrated. The present study investigated the incidence of person misfit to the model in a nationally standardized test of achievement devised using the Rasch item response theory model. It…

This booklet contains the practice tests for the Sixth-grade Ohio Proficiency Tests. Student work on these practice tests helps the teacher evaluate how well the student understands the subjects of writing, reading, mathematics, citizenship, and science. The writing test consists of two writing tasks based on one stimulus passage, and the reading,…