In the Spring 2003 issue of "Harvard Educational Review," Roy Freedle stated that the SAT® is both culturally and statistically biased, and he proposed a solution to ameliorate this bias. His claims, which garnered national attention, were based on serious errors in his analysis. We begin our analyses by assessing the psychometric…

It is a widely held belief that anchor tests should be miniature versions (i.e., minitests), with respect to content and statistical characteristics of the tests being equated. This paper examines the foundations for this belief. It examines the requirement of statistical representativeness of anchor tests that are content representative. The…

The study examined the relationship between language and mathematics with 11 classes of deaf students taking Algebra 1 or Algebra 2 at the Gallaudet University School of Preparatory Studies. Specifically, the study attempted to predict the difficulty of a variety of relatively simple algebra problems based on the abstractness of the math and the…

A joint maximum likelihood estimation algorithm, based on the partial compensatory multidimensional logistic model (PCML) proposed by L. Zeng (1989), is presented. The algorithm simultaneously estimates item difficulty parameters, the strength of each dimension, and individuals' abilities on each of the dimensions involved in arriving at a correct…

Research has shown that multiple-choice questions formed by transforming or paraphrasing a reading passage provide a measure of student comprehension. It is argued that similar transformation and paraphrasing of lesson questions is an appropriate way to form parallel multiple-choice items to be used as a posttest measure of student comprehension.…

Language testing is an area of applied linguistics that combines the exercise of professional judgment about language, learning, and the nature of the achievement of language learning with empirical data about student performance and, by inference, their abilities. The relationship between judgments and empirical data in language testing is…

This paper discusses the development and use of "item shells" in constructing multiple-choice tests. An item shell is a "hollow" item that contains the syntactic structure and context of an item without specific content. Item shells are empirically developed from successfully used items selected from an existing item pool. Use…

A general foreign language curriculum development guide for the State of Alaska outlines appropriate topics and concepts for instruction, general expected learning outcomes, and sample specific behavioral objectives for four grade groupings: 1 and 2, 3 and 4, 5 and 6, and 9 through 12. Five interdependent language skill areas are emphasized:…

Development of toddlers' combinatorial skills was examined in the domains of object manipulation, symbolic play, motor imitation, language, and peer interaction. Additionally, task demands that might produce variations in age-related patterns within or between domains were examined. Data were collected in free play sessions and during structured…

Research on schema theory and the psycholinguistic perspectives of reading suggest that the measures of readability currently used on second language tests be reconsidered. Because foreign language readers, especially in the early stages of language learning, often do not have the necessary schema or background knowledge, teachers should include…

To learn more about the specific nature of the teaching and learning problems involved, researchers conducted a clinical study of 20 high school students enrolled a BASIC course. Investigators presented each student with a sequence of eight programming problems, ranging from easy to difficult. They asked questions to track student thinking and…

A control study involving 26 college students was undertaken to determine reasons why they generally claim to prefer "easy" professors, while contradictory evidence is offered by evaluation research. The subjects were randomly assigned to conditions in which each made anonymous or non-anonymous evaluations of four hypothetical male…

Statistical analyses of the incidence of "what"-questions requiring variably complex responses are presented. The responses were asked of a bilingual child by different sets of caretakers in English and German over a one-year period starting at age 16 months. Results show that the caretakers' questions are geared first toward the child's…

One form of adaptive testing involves a two-stage procedure. The first stage is the administration of a routing test. From this first test, an estimate of an examinee's ability is obtained. On the basis of this ability estimate, a second test focused on a given ability level is administered. The purpose of this study was to compare the efficiency…