This paper accepts that the OECD's PISA has become influential in policy terms globally, but analyses the ways that the main PISA and PISA for Schools tests are positioned differently in Australia and the USA because of contrasting educational federalisms in the two nations. Our argument is that while PISA is undoubtedly influential, its effects…

Although International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement-pioneered international large-scale assessment (ILSA) of education is now a well-established science, non-practitioners and many users often substantially misunderstand how large-scale assessments are conducted, what questions and challenges they are designed to…

Although, male superiority over females in tasks measuring spatial ability is an accepted truism which has been dominated by many authors, in recent days females claim to be equal to the males in all fields of life. It will be interesting to note that this gender difference in performance on spatial tasks does not appear in all cultures. In order…

Assesses conditional states of item mastery found among items from different item domains and the effectiveness of various procedures for identifying such conditional relations. Item domains considered were from the curriculum area of multiplication of whole numbers, and were defined by a domain referenced testing system. (Author/RC)

This study involving 352 students was designed to verify empirically the a priori use of multiple matrix sampling procedures in an elementary school using a nationally normed, commercizlly published achievement test. The study focused on effect of changes in item context, effect of previous exposure to items, and relative effectiveness of multiple…

The adequacy of equipercentile, linear, one-parameter (Rasch), and three-parameter logistic item-response theory procedures for equating 12 forms of five tests of general educational development were compared. Results indicated the equating method adequacy depends on a variety of factors such as test characteristics, equating design, and sample…

The purpose of this study was to compare five methods of computing school effectiveness indices (SEIs) from longitudinal data. The methods were within-school regression, within-school regression corrected for the unreliability of measurement, mean difference scores, average individual residual scores, and school residual scores. The sample…

In this publication, designed to serve interested laymen as well as educators, various authors explore the viewpoints of the proponents and the opponents of the National Assessment Program. In their analysis of assessment and its related issues, these authors attempt to provide information that could serve as a basis for an objective consideration…

The purposes of the assessment project were to determine when the fourth grade math skills were acquired by the majority of students in the Salem, Oregon public schools, and to compare accomplishment on the criterion-referenced test with accomplishment on a standardized test. Because the project required testing grades 3-6, multiple matrix…

In this study we test the performance of some nonexperimental estimators of impacts applied to an educational intervention--reduction in class size--where achievement test scores were the outcome. We compare the nonexperimental estimates of the impacts to "true impact" estimates provided by a random-assignment design used to assess the…

Project TALENT, a large scale, long range, longitudinal study, is designed primarily to provide insights into the characteristics and development of American adolescents. In order to compare trends in test results, a comprehensive battery of Psychological, educational, and personality measures were administered to participants in the 1960, 1970,…

Latent trait model calibration procedures were used on data obtained from a group testing program. The one-parameter model of Wright and Panchapakesan and the three-parameter logistic model of Wingersky, Wood, and Lord were selected for comparison. These models and their corresponding estimation procedures were compared, using actual and simulated…

The existence of criterion-referenced (CR) measurement is questioned in this paper. Despite beliefs that differences exist between two alternative forms of measurement, CR and Norm Referenced (NR), an analysis of philosophical and psychological descriptions of measurement, as well as a growing number of empirical studies, reveal that the common…

A review of the literature on a variety of issues related to testing vocabulary knowledge in a second language addresses these topics: problems in estimating vocabulary size, including the related questions of what constitutes a word, how a sample should be selected, and what are the criteria for knowing a word; sampling the basic and specialized…