Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) released the first comprehensive study of assessment perceptions in 2012 that surveyed parents, teachers, and district administrators. In the intervening years, the landscape has shifted dramatically; indeed, it continues to shift every day. With new standards, accountability assessments, and ways of…

Many postsecondary institutions currently administer standardized tests of general college outcomes; more than a quarter of Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) member institutions do so. Using standardized tests for accountability purposes has been contentious mainly because these tests do not measure every important…

Educational achievement is a very important issue for parents, teachers, and the government. An accurate measurement plays a very important role in evaluating achievement fairly, and, therefore, analysis methods have been developed considerably in recent years. Education based on long-time learning processes forms a fruitful base for item tests,…

Several current international comparative large-scale assessments of educational achievement (ICLSA) make use of "Rasch models", to address functions essential for valid cross-cultural comparisons. From a historical perspective, ICLSA and Georg Rasch's "models for measurement" emerged at about the same time, half a century ago. However, the…

The development, maintenance, and integration of multicultural competence into all aspects of psychologists' work is critical to ethical practice in an increasingly diverse society. Measurement of multicultural competency is critical to investigating the development of multicultural competence and the effectiveness of multicultural competency…

Statements from six major professional educational organizations describe their points of view about testing and measurement. The organizations include the National Education Association; American Association of School Administrators; National Association of Secondary School Principals; National School Boards Association; National Association of…

Explores the introduction of grade criteria into the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examination as an effort to make clearer the competency and knowledge levels expected of examination candidates in Great Britain. Concludes by exploring problems with this concept and by calling for further clarification of the purpose for this…

The increasing relation between domain-referenced measurement and its implications in instruction are discussed with the argument that construction methods available do not guarantee content validity which needs more attention to be effective. Two domain-referenced testing procedures illustrate construction and validity problems. (CM)

The authors argue that the usefulness and legitimacy of measuring student growth depend upon the purpose for which the scores will be used. They conclude there are many situations in education in which measurement of student growth is possible, justifiable, and informative. (Author)

This reply to William A. Mehrens argues that although some psychometricians are reluctant to endorse the use of test data for educational decision making, it is desirable that measurement specialists provide decision makers with practical, understandable ways to use test data. (JAZ)

Suggests that the idea of testing be given up, along with the measurement of reading and the idea of reading progress. (AM)

Mastery learning strategies and criterion referenced measurement tools perform a selective function in the classroom. The selective approach within the philosophical role of schools is discussed in terms of limited educational employment, competition, talent distribution, and the suggested attributes of good testing. (CM)

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…