PISA aims to serve as a "global yardstick" for educational success, as measured by student performance. For comparisons to be meaningful across countries or over time, PISA samples must be representative of the population of 15-year-old students in each country. Exclusions and non-response can undermine this representativeness and…

Indirect indices for faking detection in questionnaires make use of a respondent's deviant or unlikely response pattern over the course of the questionnaire to identify them as a faker. Compared with established direct faking indices (i.e., lying and social desirability scales), indirect indices have at least two advantages: First, they cannot be…

This study examined the read-aloud accommodation benefits for students with disabilities (SWD) and students without disabilities (SWOD). In this study, researchers recommend ways in which to remove encumbrances faced by SWD in reading comprehension. In general, research has shown that both SWD and SWOD have met some degree of success from the…

Distance learning and online learning have become the new educational paradigm. Based on synchronicity, online learning environments can be classified into synchronous and asynchronous online learning. However, previous evidence demonstrating the effects of these two online learning modalities on students' academic achievement has been…

Phonological awareness plays a key role in learning to read; therefore, its assessment has received a lot of attention. Research in the domain of phonological awareness has been characterized by attempts to develop reliable and valid assessment tools for diverse populations. Over the past few decades, phonological awareness assessment has gone…

High school graduation is a meaningful indicator of student achievement and a stronger predictor of long-term quality of life outcomes compared to student test scores. The existing body of research has been limited on whether charter attendance improves high school graduation and whether charter attendance helps narrow the graduation gap among…

Test score comparability in international large-scale assessments (LSA) is of utmost importance in measuring the effectiveness of education systems and understanding the impact of education on economic growth. To effectively compare test scores on an international scale, score linking is widely used to convert raw scores from different linguistic…

We evaluate the predictive validity of the Massachusetts Candidate Assessment of Performance (CAP), a practice-based assessment of teaching skills that is now a requirement for teacher preparation program completion in Massachusetts. We find that candidates' performance on the CAP significantly predicts their in-service summative performance…

In data collected from virtual learning environments (VLEs), item response theory (IRT) models can be used to guide the ongoing measurement of student ability. However, such applications of IRT rely on unbiased item parameter estimates associated with test items in the VLE. Without formal piloting of the items, one can expect a large amount of…

Purpose: This study, a post hoc observational one, attempted to determine if career and technical education (CTE) students in the state of Mississippi would academically benefit from taking multiple formative assessments in an online format prior to completing their summative exams. Most CTE students in the state of Mississippi are required to…

During the COVID-19 lockdown, schools are closed, exams have been cancelled, and teaching and learning are taking an unprecedented form. In this process, two realities are brought to light. On the one hand, the pandemic highlights the widening gaps in society and the part that the educational system plays in privileging students from advantageous…

Low examinee effort is a major threat to valid uses of many test scores. Fortunately, several methods have been developed to detect noneffortful item responses, most of which use response times. To accurately identify noneffortful responses, one must set response time thresholds separating those responses from effortful ones. While other studies…

The English learner (EL) student population has grown steadily for the past 20 years. During this time, the use of standardized assessments has increased as well. Teacher understanding of assessment accommodations that best support ELs is low, despite the research that shows the unreliability of standardized achievement tests that measure the…

The Regulations of the Commissioner of Education provide that an elementary-level science test is to be administered in Grade 4 to serve as a basis for determining students' needs for academic intervention services in science. The New York State Grade 4 Elementary-Level Science Test consists of two required components: a Written Test and a…

Background: Retrieval practice promotes retention of learned information more than restudying the information. However, benefits of multiple-choice testing over restudying in real-world educational contexts and the role of practically relevant moderators such as feedback and learners' ability to retrieve tested content from memory (i.e.,…