In "Adapting Educational Measurement to the Demands of Test-Based Accountability" Koretz takes the time-honored engineering approach to educational measurement, identifying specific problems with current practice and proposing minimal modifications of the system to alleviate those problems. In response to that article, David Thissen…

Accountability has become a primary function of large-scale testing in the United States. The pressure on educators to raise scores is vastly greater than it was several decades ago. Research has shown that high-stakes testing can generate behavioral responses that inflate scores, often severely. I argue that because of these responses, using…

In his article, Haertel (this issue) asks a fundamental question about how use of a test is expected to cause improvements in the educational system and in learning. He also considers how test validity should be investigated and argues for a more expansive view of validity that does not stop with scoring or generalization (the more technical and…

In his focus article "How Is Testing Supposed to Improve Schooling?" Ed Haertel distinguishes between seven uses of educational tests as a function of the intended action and what or who will be influenced by the intended action. He then applies Mike Kane's interpretive argument approach (Kane, 2006) as a basis for speculating about the validity…

The duplex design by Bock and Mislevy for school-based testing is revisited and evaluated as a potential platform in test-based accountability assessments today. We conclude that the model could be useful in meeting the many competing demands of today's test-based accountability assessments, although many research questions will need to be…

In "Updating the Duplex Design for Test-Based Accountability in the Twenty-First Century," Bejar and Graf (2010) propose extensions to the duplex design for large-scale assessment presented in Bock and Mislevy (1988). Examining the range of people who use assessment results--from students, teachers, administrators, curriculum designers,…

This article presents the author's commentary on "Updating the Duplex Design for Test-Based Accountability in the Twenty-First Century," in which Isaac I. Bejar and E. Aurora Graf propose the application of a test design--the duplex design (which was proposed in 1988 by Bock and Mislevy) for application in current accountability assessments.…

In their article "Innovations in Setting Performance Standards for K-12 Test-Based Accountability," Kristen Huff and Barbara S. Plake (2010) lay out three preconditions for continued investment in standard-setting methodology and practice, all focused on the sound development and use of achievement level descriptors (ALDs). Among these…

Standard setting is a systematic process that uses a combination of judgmental and empirical procedures to make recommendations about where on the score continuum "cut scores" should be placed. Cut scores divide the score scale into categories consistent with the descriptions of student performance associated with multiple levels of achievement.…

"Linking" is a term given to a general class of procedures by which one represents scores X on one test or measure in terms of scores Y on another test or measure. A recent taxonomy by Holland and Dorans (2006; Holland, 2007) organizes the various types of links into three broad categories: prediction, scale aligning, and equating. In…

One promising application of diagnostic classification models (DCM) is in the area of cognitive diagnostic assessment in education. However, the successful application of DCM in educational testing will likely come with a price--and this price may be in the form of new test development procedures and practices required to yield data that satisfy…

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…

The author offers some thoughts on commentator's reactions to the substance of the measures, particularly those about measuring teacher learning and change, based on the major uses of the measures, and because this is a significant challenge facing test development as an enterprise. If teacher learning results in more integrated knowledge or…

In this article, the author echoes his co-author's and colleague's pleasure (Hill, this issue) at the thoughtfulness and far-ranging nature of the comments to their initial attempts at test validation for the mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) measures using the validity argument approach. Because of the large number of commentaries they…