"Classroom Assessment" shows pre- and in-service teachers how to use classroom testing accurately and formatively to dramatically increase their teaching effectiveness and promote student learning. In addition to clear and concise guidelines on how to develop and use quality classroom assessments, the author also focuses on the teaching…

Many test developers try to ensure the content validity of their tests by having external experts review the items, e.g. in terms of relevance, difficulty, or clarity. Although this approach is widely accepted, a closer look reveals several pitfalls need to be avoided if experts' advice is to be truly helpful. The purpose of this paper is to…

What is assessment literacy? It is a handful of fundamental understandings about the testing concepts and procedures that influence educational decisions. And it just might be the most cost-effective means of real school improvement. With characteristic humor and aplomb, assessment expert W. James Popham strips away the psychometrician-speak and…

In the present offering we challenge the presumption that the educational testing of students provides objective information about such students. This presumption largely rests on an empiricist account of science. In light of mounting criticism, however, empiricist foundationalism has given way to a social epistemology. From this standpoint,…

Developed jointly by the American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education, "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" (Revised 2014) addresses professional and technical issues of test development and use in education, psychology, and…

This presentation was presented at the 2011 National Conference on Student Assessment (CCSSO). The focus of this presentation is how to validate the common core state standards (CCSS) in math and ELA and the subsequent assessments that will be developed by state consortia. The CCSS specify the skills students need to be ready for post-secondary…

Across the globe, educational tests are being used at a rapidly increasing rate. More recently, educational tests are being used to inform educational policy and for holding educators accountable for student learning. One reason educational assessments are used for these important purposes is that they are considered to provide reliable and…

The idea that validity should be considered a property of inferences, rather than of assessments, has developed slowly over the past century. In early writings about the validity of educational assessments, validity was defined as a property of an assessment. The most common definition was that an assessment was valid to the extent that it…

The use of standardized tests for outcome assessment has grown dramatically in recent years. Two driving factors have been the No Child Left Behind legislation, and the increase in outcome assessment measures by accrediting agencies such as AACSB, the international accrediting body for business schools. Despite the growth in usage, little effort…

Reliability and validity are two characteristics that must be considered whenever information about student achievement is collected. However, those characteristics--and the methods for evaluating them--differ in large-scale testing and classroom testing contexts. This article presents the distinctions between reliability and validity in the two…

Placement exams are high-stakes assessments that determine many students' college trajectories. More than half of entering students at community colleges are placed into developmental education in at least one subject, based primarily on scores from these assessments, yet recent research fails to find evidence that placement into remediation…

Research studies have shown that a smaller percentage of students with learning disabilities participate in state assessments than do their peers without learning disabilities. Furthermore, there is almost always a performance gap between these groups of students on these assessments. It is important to evaluate whether a performance gap on a…

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…

Given the relatively high intercorrelations observed between mathematics achievement, reading achievement, and cognitive ability, it has recently been claimed that student assessment studies (e.g., TIMSS, PISA) and intelligence tests measure a single cognitive ability that is practically identical to general intelligence. The present article uses…

This study was designed to address two frequent criticisms of the SAT essay--that essay length is the best predictor of scores, and that there is an advantage in using more "sophisticated" examples as opposed to personal experience. The study was based on 2,820 essays from the first three administrations of the new SAT. Each essay was…