Geographical Olympiads are disciplinary competitions that can be a tool for assessing geographical knowledge and skills in different countries of the world. This article aims to analyse the results of the national and international geography Olympiads and to identify their conditionality and interrelationship. The secondary aim is to find out…

The framework and tools used for classroom assessment can have significant impacts on teacher practices and student achievement. Getting assessment right is an important component in creating positive learning experiences and academic success. Recent government reports (e.g., United States, Australia) call for the development of systems that use…

This article sets the stage for the description of a variety of approaches to test reviewing worldwide. It describes the importance of test reviewing as a protection of the public and of society and also the benefits of this activity for test users, who must choose measures to use in particular situations with particular clients at a particular…

The latest edition of this perennial bestseller instructs and updates students and clinicians on the basic principles of psychological assessment and measurement, recent changes in assessment procedures, and the most widely used tests in counseling practice today. Dr. Danica Hays guides counselors in the appropriate selection, interpretation, and…

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."…

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…

Just like all the high-stakes tests that determine students' futures nowadays, The Chorizo Test is a standardized test rooted in the culture of the test makers. It was originally created to be used with students in teacher training programs to sensitize them to the pitfalls inherent in standardized pencil-and-paper tests, such as linguistic bias…

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…

"Classroom Assessment in Action" clarifies the multi-faceted roles of measurement and assessment and their applications in a classroom setting. Comprehensive in scope, Shermis and Di Vesta explain basic measurement concepts and show students how to interpret the results of standardized tests. From these basic concepts, the authors then…

Assessing a high school's effectiveness is not straightforward. Comparing a school's standardized test scores to those of other schools is one approach to measuring effectiveness, but a major objection to this method is that students' test scores tend to be related to students' "socioeconomic" status--family household income, for…

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…

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…