With the increasing amount of testing taking place in classrooms, teachers may question how appropriate those assessments are for the growing numbers of English language learners (ELLs) in the United States. One of the assessment options for classroom teachers is the informal reading inventory (IRI), which is the most frequently used assessment…

Alternatives to vertical scales are compared for measuring longitudinal academic growth and for producing school-level growth measures. The alternatives examined were empirical cross-grade regression, ordinary least squares and logistic regression, and multilevel models. The student data used for the comparisons were Arabic Grades 4 to 10 in…

Test developers are responsible to define how test scores should be interpreted and used. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) directed the Secretary of Education to use results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to confirm the proficiency scores from state developed tests. There are two sets of federal definitions…

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…

Principles are established for reaching valid decisions as to whether evaluative judgments should be norm referenced or criterion referenced. A set of decision rules is presented, in flow chart form, to serve as a guide to the decision-making process. The use of these decision rules is illustrated for a variety of practical situations. The…

Analyzed average performance changes between tested grades for Hawaiian students who took the Stanford Achievement Test from 1992 to 1996. These local norms for Hawaii provide tools to improve the understanding of the performance of Hawaiian students relative to their mainland counterparts. (SLD)

Discusses on the basis of Ph.D. qualifying examination results, advantages of a discrete scoring system under which continuously graded answers are classified as either correct'' or incorrect'' with the cutoff placed at a bias level.'' Indicates that the discrete method is characterized by increased selectivity about the marginal students. (CC)

To assist Pennsylvania school personnel in interpreting the reports resulting from that State's Educational Quality Assessment program, this manual provides information on the goals, dimensions measured, variables measured, and method used. Appendixes provide the school norms for Grade 5 and Grade 11, a Teacher Questionnaire, School Information…

We examine the equivalence of two construct-a-concept-map techniques: construct-a-map with created linking phrases (C), and construct-a-map with selected linking phrases (S). The former places few constraints on the respondent and has been considered the gold standard; the latter is cost and time efficient. Both their products and processes are…

The results of the Pennsylvania Educational Quality Assessment program, Phase II, are interpreted. The first section of the manual presents a statement of each of the Ten Goals of Quality Education which served as the basis of the assessment. Also included are the key items on the questionnaires administered to 5th and 11th grade students. The…

The Test of Language Development--Intermediate (TOLD-I) was administered to 26 learning disabled (LD) and 26 nonLD elementary aged black children. The subjects were matched for age, IQ, and class placement. Statistically significant differences were found between the two groups on four of the five subtests of the TOLD-I. The data also were…

Seniors in Broward County (Florida) public and private high schools were compared on the basis of 1970-1971 statewide test results, with comparisons made of how well students were achieving in terms of their capabilities as measured by the verbal and quantitative aptitude sections of the statewide battery. Some of the findings were that: 1)…

Grade-equivalent scores are widely used in the school system in reporting students' performance on standardized achievement tests. This paper explores how grade equivalent scores are calculated and interpreted. In addition, the paper examines the limitations of grade-equivalent scores through the use of small heuristic data sets. A…

Metropolitan Achievement Tests (MAT) and Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Tests were administered to elementary school students of the Oklahoma City Public Schools. Results of the testing are presented in tables and consist of: elementary school test results as compared to the national means in reading, language, and mathematics; a comparison of scores…