This National Academy of Education (NAEd) volume provides guidance to key stakeholders on how to accurately report and interpret comparability assertions concerning large-scale educational assessments as well as how to ensure greater comparability by paying close attention to key aspects of assessment design, content, and procedures. The goal of…

The reporting of scores on educational tests is at times misunderstood, misinterpreted, and potentially confusing to examinees and other stakeholders who may need to interpret test scores. In reporting test results to examinees, there is a need for clarity in the message communicated. As pressure rises for students to demonstrate performance at a…

Much of the argument about comparability of examination standards is at cross-purposes; contradictory positions are in fact often both defensible, but they are using the same words to mean different things. To clarify this, two broad conceptualisations of standards can be identified. One sees the standard in the observed phenomena of performance…

Paul Newton (2010), with his characteristic concern about theory, has set out two different ways of thinking about the basis upon which equivalences of one sort or another are established between test score scales. His reason for doing this is a desire to establish "the defensibility of linkages lower on the continuum than concordance."…

The rank-ordering method for standard maintaining was designed for the purpose of mapping a known cut-score (e.g. a grade boundary mark) on one test to an equivalent point on the test score scale of another test, using holistic expert judgements about the quality of exemplars of examinees' work (scripts). It is a novel application of an old…

This article presents the author's rejoinder to thinking about linking from issue 8(1). Particularly within the more embracing linking frameworks, e.g., Holland & Dorans (2006) and Holland (2007), there appears to be a major disjunction between (1) classification discourse: the supposed basis for classification, that is, the underlying theory…

"Linking" is a term given to a general class of procedures by which one represents scores X on one test or measure in terms of scores Y on another test or measure. A recent taxonomy by Holland and Dorans (2006; Holland, 2007) organizes the various types of links into three broad categories: prediction, scale aligning, and equating. In…

Robert Coe has claimed that three broad conceptions of comparability can be identified from the literature: performance, statistical and conventional. Each of these he rejected, in favour of a single, integrated conception which relies upon the notion of a "linking construct" and which he termed "construct comparability".…

Newton's article (2010) makes three main contributions to the literature. First, it is transatlantic, bringing together literatures that have been dealing with similar problems, using sometimes different methods and certainly with distinctive educational, cultural perspectives. He points out that neither of these literatures has all of the…

The article "Thinking About Linking" by Newton (2010) presents a novel philosophical perspective on the way that educational assessments should be linked. Newton starts by describing the linking framework as it was characterized in various publications and identifies a cross-cultural dimension in the definitions and uses of test…

ACT is often asked whether student scores on the ACT[R] test can be used to make "norm-referenced" or "standards-referenced" comparisons. Norm-referenced interpretations compare students to one another, while standards-referenced interpretations measure student performance against predefined content standards. This brief shows…

Tests and assessments are generally administered to gather data to aid in decision making, with at an individual student level or at an aggregated level. In order to incorporate assessment data in informed decision making, test users need to understand the test results. This chapter highlights the types of test scores and test score…

Three groups of persons are involved in the testing enterprise: test producers, test users, and test takers. A wide literature is available to guide the first two groups, but only recently have measurement professionals considered the interests of test takers in any careful way. The content of this chapter is presented as a set of 26…

In today's educational setting, assessment results weigh heavily in determining what students should know and be able to do. In addition, because assessment scores are often tied to accountability systems that affect both teaching and learning, they influence what is taught in the classroom. The changes in the use of assessments underscore the…

The importance of educational accountability and assessment literacy is recognized as a long-term challenge to the educational system. The complexities in becoming an assessment literate and provide an opportunity to the educators to display their effective learning is discussed.