While measurement precision is relatively easy to establish for single tests and assessments, it is much more difficult to determine for decision making with multiple tests on different subjects. This latter is the situation in the system of final examinations for secondary education in the Netherlands and is used as an example in this paper. This…

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…

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…

A potential undesirable effect of multistage testing is differential speededness, which happens if some of the test takers run out of time because they receive subtests with items that are more time intensive than others. This article shows how a probabilistic response-time model can be used for estimating differences in time intensities and speed…

Reviews selected research, widely-used commercial tests, and recent literature on critical thinking. States that evaluation of critical thinking processes should encompass more than simple tests. Concludes with six guidelines for evaluating critical thinking. (JDH)

Discussed are nine questions regarding standard setting issues in educational testing: (1) Should normative or content-referenced standards be used? (2) Different standard setting methods yield different results. Does this finding present a problem? (3) Assess the adequacy of the grounding of various methods of standard setting in psychological…

Reports the efforts of the California Assessment Program (CAP) to interject critical thinking items into its new statewide social studies tests. Provides definitions of the critical thinking skills tested by the 8th grade social studies CAP test, and lists 100 critical thinking skills vocabulary words. (JDH)

Description of an objective method for assigning weights to questions on examinations includes discussions of classical test theory, knowledge organization, and how task analysis can be used to identify knowledge elements required to solve specific problems, rank them, and assign objective weights to exam questions using a Pareto distribution (7…

A study examined whether Canadian twelfth grade students' papers would rate differently when they were written in different modes and whether there are significant differences between global (modified holistic) scores and rhetorical effectiveness (modified primary trait) scores for the same papers. Fifty students wrote on two transactional topics…

Presented in this symposium reader are nine papers, four of which deal with the theory and impact of the Rasch model on language testing and five of which discuss final examinations in secondary schools in both general and specific terms. The papers are: "Introduction to Rasch Measurement: Some Implications for Language Testing" (J. J.…