Within initial teacher education there is increasing pressure to enhance the use of assessment data to support students to improve their knowledge and skills, and to determine what standards they meet upon graduation. For such data to be useful, both programme designers and students require meaningful and comprehensive assessment reports on…

In setting the cut-scores on National Curriculum tests it is important to maintain standards. In the process of test development, both within and across years, changes are made to the style of the questions in order to increase their "accessibility". This raises the question of whether a more accessible test should have higher cut-scores. Purely…

Field tests of test items are useful in developing cutting scores for important tests, such as teacher certification examinations and high school graduation tests, because they indicate test item quality and estimate future examinee performance. However, field test data may provide a faulty indication of examinee performance on the real test.…

The effectiveness of a model for determining a minimal cut-off score for criterion-referenced tests was examined. The model, based upon techniques presented originally by Nedelsky and by Angoff, was first used in conjunction with a multiple choice test developed for use in certifying school counselors in Georgia. A "knowledge estimation panel" was…

One of the most appropriate quasiexperimental approaches to compensatory education is the regression-discontinuity design. However, it remains underutilized, in part because of the need to clarify the link between the mathematical model and administrative decision-making. This paper explains the derivation of a program efficiency index congruent…