Many states have adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which emphasize "deeper learning" skills, such as mastery of core academic content, critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration. But can the new tests being developed to align with the CCSS be used to promote deeper learning and high-quality classroom instruction?…

There are good reasons for re-thinking teacher evaluation. Evaluation systems in most school districts appear to be far from rigorous. A recent study showed that more than 99 percent of teachers in a number of districts were rated "satisfactory," which does not comport with empirical evidence that teachers differ substantially from each…

In the coming years, states will need to make the most significant changes to their assessment systems in a decade as they implement the Common Core State Standards, a common framework for what students are expected to know that will replace existing standards in 45 states and the District of Columbia. The Common Core effort has prompted concerns…

The first large-scale, nationwide academic achievement testing program using Stanford Achievement Test (Stanford) for deaf and hard-of-hearing children in the United States started in 1969. Over the past three decades, the Stanford has served as a benchmark in the field of deaf education for assessing student academic achievement. However, the…

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,…

The synthetic function is a weighted average of the identity (the linking function for forms that are known to be completely parallel) and a traditional equating method. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the benefits of the synthetic function on small-sample equating using various real data sets gathered from different…

The public, education, and workforce sectors all have expressed interest regarding the key knowledge, skills, and abilities that enable individuals to be productive members of society. Although past efforts have attempted to create frameworks of student learning outcomes, the results have varied due to different perspectives and goals. Thus, the…

Conceptions are contextual. In the realm of education, conceptions of various constituent groups are often shaped over a period of a number of years during which time these groups have participated in educational endeavors. Specifically, conceptions of assessment are influenced by beliefs, actions, attitudes, understandings, and past experiences.…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the college-readiness rates of Black, Hispanic, White, and Asian graduates of public secondary schools in Texas using archival data from the Texas Education Agency Academic Excellence Indicator System. Data examined were the average ACT and SAT scores for the past 10 school years (i.e., 2001-2002…

Student responses to the West Virginia Educational Standards Test (WESTEST) 2 Online Writing Assessment are scored by a computer-scoring engine. The scoring method is not widely understood among educators, and there exists a misperception that it is not comparable to hand scoring. To address these issues, the West Virginia Department of Education…

Automated Essay Scoring (AES) has garnered a great deal of attention from the rhetoric and composition/writing studies community since the Educational Testing Service began using e-rater[R] and the "Criterion"[R] Online Writing Evaluation Service as products in scoring writing tests, and most of the responses have been negative. While the…

Differential item functioning (DIF) analysis is a key component in the evaluation of the fairness and validity of educational tests. The goal of this project was to review the status of ETS DIF analysis procedures, focusing on three aspects: (a) the nature and stringency of the statistical rules used to flag items, (b) the minimum sample size…

The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) is one of the world's leading educational research centres. ACER's mission is to create and promote research-based knowledge, products and services that can be used to improve learning across the life span. This annual report describes ACER's milestones and accomplishments for the 2013-2014…

Measuring a teacher's effectiveness in quantifiable ways is a logical step in a society driven by the SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely objectives) that pervade modern management. The idea of using student performance on standardized tests to judge a teacher's effectiveness picked up steam after the Obama…

The way forward to better assessment begins with the conception of assessment not as a single test but as a coherent "system" of measures. Coherent systems must be composed of valid measures of learning and be horizontally, developmentally, and vertically aligned to serve classroom, school, and district improvement. Coherent assessment…