The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides greater flexibility in state accountability systems than did previous federal legislation. In response, many states continue to refine their accountability systems to include college readiness tests, including college admissions and placement exams. This paper summarizes perspectives of K-12…

Over the past decade, RTI International has pursued the goal of quality, inclusive, differentiated early grade literacy instruction in nearly 30 early grade reading or early grade literacy programs in low- and middle-income (LMI) countries. Across our diverse portfolio, we have supported Ministries of Education (Ministries) in diverse contexts in…

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a promising form of online education. However, the occurrence of academic dishonesty has been threatening MOOC certificates' effectiveness as a serious tool for recruiters and employers. Recently, a large-scale study on the log traces from more than one hundred MOOCs created by Harvard and MIT has identified…

In this paper we highlight teacher experiences of the administration of high-stakes testing, in particular, of the 2012 Annual National Assessments (ANAs). The exploration is based on data gathered across two primary numeracy teacher development projects in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng in the form of open-ended questionnaires designed to elicit…

Adaptive testing is advantageous in that it provides more efficient ability estimates with fewer items than linear testing does. Item-driven adaptive pretesting may also offer similar advantages, and verification of such a hypothesis about item calibration was the main objective of this study. A suitability index (SI) was introduced to adaptively…

Among the several forms of accommodations used in the assessment of English language learners (ELLs), language-based accommodations are the most effective in making assessments linguistically accessible to these students. However, there are significant challenges associated with the implementation of many of these accommodations. This article…

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,…

On August 7th, 2013, the New York State Education Commissioner, John King, announced the initial results of the state's new assessment, which was designed to measure college and career readiness relative to the Common Core Learning Standards. Commissioner King noted that the proficiency rates on these assessments were significantly lower than…

This manual was written to provide technical information regarding the General Educational Development (GED®) test as evidence that the GED® test is technically sound. Throughout this manual, documentation is provided regarding the development of the GED® test and data collection activities, as well as evidence of reliability and validity. This…

Item response theory parameters have to be estimated, and because of the estimation process, they do have uncertainty in them. In most large-scale testing programs, the parameters are stored in item banks, and automated test assembly algorithms are applied to assemble operational test forms. These algorithms treat item parameters as fixed values,…

The random-threshold generalized unfolding model (RTGUM) was developed by treating the thresholds in the generalized unfolding model as random effects rather than fixed effects to account for the subjective nature of the selection of categories in Likert items. The parameters of the new model can be estimated with the JAGS (Just Another Gibbs…

Through simulated data, five multidimensional computerized adaptive testing (MCAT) selection procedures with varying test lengths are examined and compared using different stopping rules. Fixed item exposure rates are used for all the items, and the Priority Index (PI) method is used for the content constraints. Two stopping rules, standard error…

In some popular test designs (including computerized adaptive testing and multistage testing), many item pairs are not administered to any test takers, which may result in some complications during dimensionality analyses. In this paper, a modified DETECT index is proposed in order to perform dimensionality analyses for response data from such…

We investigated students' metacognitive experiences with regard to feelings of difficulty (FD), feelings of satisfaction (FS), and estimate of effort (EE), employing either computerized adaptive testing (CAT) or computerized fixed item testing (FIT). In an experimental approach, 174 students in grades 10 to 13 were tested either with a CAT or a…

This project examined academic reading in two contrasting English as a medium of instruction (EMI) university settings in Nepal and Sweden and the unique challenges facing students who are studying in a language other than their primary language. The motivation for the project was to explore the role of high-stakes testing in EMI contexts and the…