This article is the second of a series of articles appearing in "Communiqué" about how school psychologists can adopt and promote the evidence-based practices in math assessment and instruction. The focus of this article is on measuring math skills for screening, diagnostic decisions, and progress monitoring. [For the first article in…

In recent years, online teaching has become extremely popular. Most institutions of higher learning are offering online courses in almost every field of study. Teaching any course online is challenging, but teaching quantitative courses, such as operations management, management science, statistics, and others, have added a more challenging…

Mastery-grading techniques such as mastery-based grading, specifications grading, and standards-based grading are assessment techniques professors are implementing in order to support a growth mindset of learning, decrease test anxiety, and help students develop a deeper understanding of course objectives. In this paper, we provide an analysis of…

The authors present the results of quantitative data and student feedback from a two-year study of the effects of a new assessment model called "mastery-based testing." In mastery-based testing, students are given problems in which they can only receive full credit for the problem after they demonstrate mastery of the objective being…

Standards-based grading (SBG), sometimes called learning objectives-based assessment (LOBA), is an assessment model that relies on students demonstrating mastery of learning objectives (sometimes referred to as standards). The goal of this grading system is to focus students on mastering learning objectives rather than on accumulating points. I…

The Bloomington Project School (BPS) is a charter school that has successfully adopted and implemented several learner-centered educational strategies. This case study offers a glimpse into its student-centered, collaborative, and interdisciplinary learning and teaching processes; its mastery-based assessment process; and its successful technology…

We used collaborative testing in a veterinary physiology course (65 students) to answer the following questions: 1) do students with individual correct responses or students with individual incorrect responses change their answers during group testing? and 2) do high-performing students make the decisions, that is, are low-performing students…

On Monday, the teacher assigns her class a list of 20 spelling words to learn. On Friday, she tests the students on how well they learned to spell these words. This "mastery measurement" is the traditional way of determining student progress. The next spelling mastery test will indicate mastery of the next week's 20 new words, a new skill.…

Describes the essential elements of a new generation of tests, shows how they might promote learning, and indicates what it will take to create them. Mastery systems envisioned by the Educational Testing Service will provide immediate, elaborate feedback; express learning progress via mapping; and present "real world" test questions.…

This study is an attempt to answer the following research question: can the reliability of a criterion-referenced test be accurately determined according to a multiple classification of the student's performance? Specifically, the study pursues the beta-multinomial model, which postulates the probability distribution of an examinee's degree of…

This study examined the efficacy of teacher judgment in the process of setting mastery scores (cut scores) for fourth-grade mathematics in local school districts in Nebraska in terms of agreement between teacher classification of students and classification by the cut score obtained by this classification. The study also examined cut scores in…

Constraints on criterion-referenced tests to make mastery/nonmastery classifications of motor skills can lead to excessively long tests. A sequential probability ratio test classified many subjects' golf shots quickly but required many trials for four subjects. The test's classification accuracy makes it a potentially useful device for physical…

Excessive emphasis on objectives can lead to teachers who are good compliers, not necessarily good teachers. Teachers can become so preoccupied with evaluations, record keeping, and paperwork deadlines that they haven't time or energy to reflect on their teaching. (MT)

Among the 22 tests cited in this bibliography are end-of-course tests, tests of the American Chemical Society, and chemistry item banks. This document is one in a series of topical bibliographies from the Test Collection (TC) at the Educational Testing Service (ETS) containing descriptions of more than 18,000 tests and other measurement devices…

Instead of being devices for measuring what students have learned, tests should be instructional--the central vehicle for clarifying and setting intellectual standards. To regain control over testing and instruction, schools need to rethink their diploma requirements and grading systems. Then school transcripts will become trustworthy again.…