In this report we provide preliminary evidence on the measurement characteristics for a new type of teaching performance assessment designed to be combined with complementary assessments of teacher content knowledge. The resulting test, which we refer to as the Foundational Assessment of Competencies for Teaching (FACT), is designed for use as…

Educational Testing Service (ETS), working with 21 U.S. law schools, evaluated the predictive validity of the GRE® General Test using a sample of 1,587 current and graduated law students. Results indicated that the GRE is a strong, generalizably valid predictor of first-year law school grades and that it provides useful information even when…

Scores on essay-based assessments that are part of standardized admissions tests are typically given relatively little weight in admissions decisions compared to the weight given to scores from multiple-choice assessments. Evidence is presented to suggest that more weight should be given to these assessments. The reliability of the writing scores…

In an article in the Winter 2011 issue of the "Journal of Educational Measurement", van der Linden, Jeon, and Ferrara suggested that "test takers should trust their initial instincts and retain their initial responses when they have the opportunity to review test items." They presented a complex IRT model that appeared to show that students would…

Data from 787 international undergraduate students at an urban university in the United States were used to demonstrate the importance of separating a sample into meaningful subgroups in order to demonstrate the ability of an English language assessment to predict the first-year grade point average (GPA). For example, when all students were pooled…

This study explores stereotype threat on low-stakes tests used in a large-scale assessment, math and reading tests in the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS). Issues identified in laboratory research (though not observed in studies of high-stakes tests) were assessed: whether inquiring about their race and gender is related to the…

Research on examinees' response changes on multiple-choice tests over the past 80 years has yielded some consistent findings, including that most examinees make score gains by changing answers. This study expands the research on response changes by focusing on a high-stakes admissions test--the Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning measures…

This study examined the relationship between scores on the TOEFL Internet-Based Test (TOEFL iBT[R]) and academic performance in higher education, defined here in terms of grade point average (GPA). The academic records for 2594 undergraduate and graduate students were collected from 10 universities in the United States. The data consisted of…

In order to estimate the likely effects on item difficulty when a calculator becomes available on the quantitative section of the Graduate Record Examinations® (GRE®-Q), 168 items (in six 28-item forms) were administered either with or without access to an on-screen four-function calculator. The forms were administered as a special research…

Two methods of showing the ability of high school grades (high school grade point averages) and SAT scores to predict cumulative grades in different types of college courses were evaluated in a sample of 26 colleges. Each college contributed data from three cohorts of entering freshmen, and each cohort was followed for at least four years.…

The impact of allowing more time for each question on the SAT I: Reasoning Test scores was estimated by embedding sections with a reduced number of questions into the standard 30-minute equating section of two national test administrations. Thus, for example, questions were deleted from a verbal section that contained 35 questions to produce forms…

Descriptions of validity results for the GRE® General Test based solely on correlation coefficients or percentage of the variance accounted for are not merely difficult to interpret, they are likely to be misinterpreted. Predictors that apparently account for a small percentage of the variance may actually be highly important from a practical…

The utility of raw gain analysis for validation of college placement tests is demonstrated with scores from the Descriptive Test of Mathematics Skills. Gains during one semester for students in various freshman level mathematics courses were evaluated. Results suggest that gain analysis is a useful tool for placement test validation. (Author/MLW)

Test results of 915 high school students taking a history examination with a choice of topics show that students were generally able to pick the topic on which they could get the highest score. Implications for fair scoring when topic choice is allowed are discussed. (SLD)

The Graduate Record Examination General Test (GRE) is a measure of academic reasoning abilities that is intended to be a power test in which speed of responding plays at most a minor role. To test this assumption, we experimentally administered both the verbal and quantitative sections of the GRE with standard time limits and with 1.5 times the…