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…

Legislation leading to the mandating of accountability testing in schools was chronicled between the publication of "A Nation at Risk" (1983) to the conclusion of No Child Left Behind (2016). Involvement in education by the federal government increased throughout the educational legislation during this time period. The Omnibus Trade and…

This article reviews four interrelated approaches to reducing an inequitable gap in cognitive and educational test scores between individuals of a dominant culture and individuals of other cultures or subcultures. These approaches include (a) use of broader measures, (b) performance- and project-based assessments, (c) direct measurement of…

Developed jointly by the American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education, "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" (Revised 2014) addresses professional and technical issues of test development and use in education, psychology, and…

This three-paper dissertation explores item cluster-based assessments, first in general as it relates to modeling, and then, specific issues surrounding a particular item cluster-based assessment designed. There should be a reasonable analogy between the structure of a psychometric model and the cognitive theory that the assessment is based upon.…

This hearing of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions examines No Child Left Behind, focusing on testing and accountability. At the center of the debate about how to fix No Child Left Behind is what to do about the Federal requirement that states, each year, administer 17 standardized tests with high stakes consequences.…

This study constitutes the secondary analysis of data collected as part of classroom instruction in a prior practitioner inquiry study. Consequently, IRB approval, parental consent, and participant assent for the present study were obtained after the conclusion of the original study.

This paper explores the impact of selection by ability in schooling systems on individual lives. It draws on narratives collected with a group of 18 people (accessed through a local U3A group) who were at school in Britain in a period from the 1940s through to the 1960s. This period saw significant changes in society and to schooling following the…

The present study explored the dimensionality of cognitive structure from two approaches. The first approach used a famous relation between Visual Spatial Working Memory (VSWM) and calculation to demonstrate the multidimensional item response analyses when true dimensions are unknown. The second approach explored the detectability of dimensions by…

Haertel's argument is that one must "expand the scope of test validation to include indirect testing effects" because these effects are often the "rationale for the entire testing program." The author strongly agrees that this is essential. However, he maintains that Haertel's argument does not go far enough and that there are two additional…

This case study provides superintendents, principals, and teachers with information on how three school systems have used an assessment developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)--the OECD Test for Schools--to monitor students' academic outcomes and inform shifts in policy and teacher practice to meet students'…

The number one quality business leaders look for in employees is creativity and yet the U.S. education system undermines the development of the higher-order skills that promote creativity by its dogged focus on multiple-choice tests. Stephan Turnipseed and Linda DarlingHammond discuss the kind of rich accountability system that will help students…

In 2018, 26 states administered a college admissions test to all public school juniors. Nearly half of those states proposed to use those scores as their academic achievement indicators for federal accountability under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA); many others are planning to use those scores for other accountability purposes.…

There has long been a concern about the lack of representation of ethnic minorities in the field of educational measurement. As previous research has shown that graduate programs primarily rely on their websites for recruiting efforts, the objective of this study was to conduct a content analysis of all U.S. educational measurement program…

The semantics, or meaning, of validity is a fluid concept in educational and psychological testing. Contemporary controversies surrounding this concept appear to stem from the proper location of validity. Under one view, validity is a property of score-based inferences and entailed uses of test scores. This view is challenged by the…