Pupil monitoring systems support the teacher in tailoring teaching to the individual level of a student and in comparing the progress and results of teaching with national standards. The systems are based on the availability of an item bank calibrated using item response theory. The assessment of the students' progress and results can be further…

Many applications of educational testing have a missing data aspect (MDA). This MDA is perhaps most pronounced in item banking, where each examinee responds to a different subtest of items from a large item pool and where both person and item parameter estimates are needed. The Rasch model is emphasized, and its non-parametric counterpart (the…

In recent years, educational research and development has focused increased attention on ways of enhancing the instructional value of tests. This ERIC Digest summarizes some of the recent advances in linking instruction and assessment. Studies of teacher effectiveness indicate how important systematic assessment of student progress and use of test…

This report provides an overview of the current applications of computer technology to construct test items and/or to formulate tests according to sound measurement principles. The test items may be computer-generated from strategies programmed by test constructors, or pre-constructed by item writers and stored in computer memory. The tests…

Tailored testing procedures for achievement testing were applied in a situation that failed to meet some of the specifications generally considered to be necessary for tailored testing. Discrepancies from the appropriate conditions included the use of small samples for calibrating items, and the use of an item pool that was not designed to be…

Simulated tailored tests were used to investigate the relationships between characteristics of the item pool and the computer program, and the reliability and bias of the resulting ability estimates. The computer program was varied to provide for various step sizes (differences in difficulty between successive steps) and different acceptance…