Given its centrality to assessment, until the concept of validity includes concern for racial justice, such matters will be seen as residing outside the "real" work of validation, rendering them powerless to count against the apparent scientific merit of the test. As the definition of validity has evolved, however, it holds great…

There are many available screeners for reading and other education or social-emotional outcomes. This brief outlines important things to consider when choosing and using a screener.

In the wake of the COVID-19 boom in remote administration of language tests, it appears likely that remote administration will be a permanent fixture in the language testing landscape. Accordingly, language test providers, stakeholders, and researchers must grapple with the implications of remote proctoring on valid, fair, and just uses of tests.…

We are developing the Equitable Screening to Support Youth (ESSY) Whole Child Screener to address concerns prevalent in existing school-based screenings that impede goals to advance educational equity using universal screeners. Traditional assessment development does not include end users in the early development phases, instead relying on a…

The authors describe challenges of following professional standards for educational achievement testing due to the complexity of gathering appropriate evidence to support demanding test interpretation and use. Validity evidence has been found to be low for some individual testing standards, leading to the possibility of faulty or impoverished test…

This article offers a critique of the validity argument put forward by Camara, Mattern, Croft, and Vispoel (2019) regarding the use of college-admissions tests in high school assessment systems. We challenge their argument in two main ways. First, we illustrate why their argument fails to address broader issues related to consequences of using…

This article provides a validation framework for research on the development and use of science Learning Progressions (LPs). The framework describes how evidence from various sources can be used to establish an interpretive argument and a validity argument at five stages of LP research--development, scoring, generalisation, extrapolation, and use.…

This article provides a validation framework for research on the development and use of science Learning Progressions (LPs). The framework describes how evidence from various sources can be used to establish an interpretive argument and a validity argument at five stages of LP research--development, scoring, generalisation, extrapolation, and use.…

Despite the call for an argument-based approach to validity over 25 years ago, few examples exist in the published literature. One possible explanation for this outcome is that the complexity of the argument-based approach makes implementation difficult. To counter this claim, we propose that the Assessment Triangle can serve as the overarching…

We are developing the Equitable Screening to Support Youth (ESSY) Whole Child Screener to address concerns prevalent in existing school-based screenings that impede goals to advance educational equity using universal screeners. Traditional assessment development does not include end users in the early development phases, instead relying on a…

Maul's paper, "Rethinking Traditional Methods of Survey Validation," is a clever and pointed indictment of a set of specific but widespread practices in psychological measurement and the social sciences at large. Through it, Maul highlights central issues in the way to approach theory building and theory testing, bringing to mind the…

In 2018, 26 states administered a college admissions test to all public school juniors. Nearly half of those states proposed to use those scores as their academic achievement indicators for federal accountability under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA); many others are planning to use those scores for other accountability purposes.…

Kane distinguishes between two kinds of argument: the interpretation/use argument and the validity argument. This commentary considers whether there really are two kinds of argument, two arguments, or just one. It concludes that there is just one argument: the validity argument. (Contains 2 figures and 5 notes.)

This article reviews the intended uses of these college- and career-readiness assessments with the goal of articulating an appropriate validity argument to support such uses. These assessments differ fundamentally from today's state assessments employed for state accountability. Current assessments are used to determine if students have…

Implications of the multiple-use of accountability assessments for the process of validation are examined. Multiple-use refers to the simultaneous use of results from a single administration of an assessment for its intended use and for one or more additional uses. A theoretical discussion of the issues for validation which emerge from…