Teachers can develop science literacy among pupils through Inquiry-Based Science Education. IBSE helps to evolve the inquiry skills necessary for understanding the world of science and nature. To be able to improve the level of inquiry skills systematically, we need to know the current level among pupils. For this reason, we designed a…

Recent years have produced a surge in interest in improving state assessment programs. Many states are designing new assessments. Much of this innovation is aimed at addressing longstanding areas of unhappiness with typical domain-sampled, end-of-year state assessments: States want to streamline assessment activities, enhance the instructional…

This dissertation aims to bridge the gap between validity theory and the practice of validation. The dissertation employs a three-article approach. Following the introduction in Chapter I, three independent manuscripts representing three empirical studies are presented (i.e., Chapters II - IV). Each chapter is a stand-alone publishable manuscript,…

Errors in examination papers and other assessment instruments can compromise fairness. For example, a history question containing an incorrect historical date could be impossible for students to answer. Incorrect instructions at the start of an examination could lead students to answer the wrong number of questions. As there is little research on…

The educational testing landscape is changing in many significant ways as evidence-based, principled assessment design (PAD) approaches are formally adopted. This article discusses the challenges and presents some score scale- and task-focused strategies for developing useful performance-level descriptors (PLDs) under a PAD approach. Details of…

Establishing a cut score is a crucial aspect of the test development process since the selected cut score has the potential to impact students' performance outcomes and shape instructional strategies within the classroom. Therefore, it is vital for those involved in test development to set a cut score that is both fair and justifiable. This cut…

The completion rates were compared for long-form questions where a large blank answer space is provided and for long-form questions where the answer space has bullet-points prompts corresponding to the parts of the question. It was found that students were more likely to complete a question when bullet points were provided in the answer space.…

This framework marks the first in a series of five reports detailing the work of the Optimizing Assessment for All (OAA) project at Brookings to strengthen education systems' capacity to integrate 21st century skills (21CS) into teaching and learning, using assessment as a lever for changing classroom practices. In a world of rapid advancement and…

Many test developers try to ensure the content validity of their tests by having external experts review the items, e.g. in terms of relevance, difficulty, or clarity. Although this approach is widely accepted, a closer look reveals several pitfalls need to be avoided if experts' advice is to be truly helpful. The purpose of this paper is to…

The field of educational measurement has evolved considerably since the first doctoral programs were established. In response, programs have typically tacked on courses that address newly developed theories, methods, tools, and techniques. As our review of current programs evidences, this approach produces artificial distinctions among topics and…

This paper identifies important technological, financial, and equity challenges to the development and implementation of online or onscreen educational testing. The insights are based on the author's experiences in New Zealand of being the senior project manager for the Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning (asTTle) computer-based…

In this digital ITEMS module, Dr. Robert [Bob] Mislevy and Dr. Maria Elena Oliveri introduce and illustrate a sociocognitive perspective on educational measurement, which focuses on a variety of design and implementation considerations for creating fair and valid assessments for learners from diverse populations with diverse sociocultural…

In "Adapting Educational Measurement to the Demands of Test-Based Accountability" Koretz takes the time-honored engineering approach to educational measurement, identifying specific problems with current practice and proposing minimal modifications of the system to alleviate those problems. In response to that article, David Thissen…

A common interpretation of achievement test results is that they provide measures of achievement that are much like other measures we commonly use for height, weight, or the cost of goods. In a limited sense, such interpretations are correct, but some nuances of these interpretations have important implications for the use of achievement test…

Item analysis is essential in improving items which will be used again in later tests; it can also be used to eliminate misleading items in a test. The study focused on item and test quality and explored the relationship between difficulty index (p-value) and discrimination index (DI) with distractor efficiency (DE). The study was conducted among…