One of the most prevalent and controversial accommodations for students with disabilities is an audio presentation of written test material, the "read-aloud" accommodation. This study used test administration data from the Missouri Assessment Program to examine effects of using the read-aloud accommodation on the characteristics of…

This document discusses the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency (CAAP) and ASSET (developed for student advising, placement, and retention) tests that were conducted by Mid-Plains Community College Area (MPCCA) (Nebraska) on 190 students in April 2001. The purpose of the testing was to gather as many matched pairs of ASSET/CAAP scores…

This study investigated the effect on student scores of using anchor sets that differed in dimensionality in item response theory (IRT) scaled tests. Real data from a mathematics achievement test that had been documented to have dimensions aligned with item format were used. Item responses were available from a representative sample of…

This evaluation studied the role PLATO Learning played within a basic competency remediation program and in a peer tutor program at Western Harnett High School (WHHS) in Lillington, North Carolina in the spring 1998 semester. To graduate from North Carolina high schools, students must pass a basic competency examination. Those WHHS students…

Educational assessment is a process of collecting evidence and interpreting it to provide instructors with information regarding students' learning. However, the current design and scoring of most standardized educational tests are insufficient to serve this purpose. The limitation exists primarily due to the lack of cognitive information…

The relationship between differential item functioning (DIF)and test item context effects was studied in an investigation of whether the patterns of gender DIF in parcels of items are influenced by changes in item position, as seen in two forms of a test. A second aim was to determine whether performance of male and female test takers is…

This report contains information gathered in the second of a series from the National Center for Research in Mathematical Sciences Education regarding effects of mandated testing. The purpose of the study was to determine for each state: (1) whether mathematics testing was mandated at the state level; (2) the processes of test selection or…

Procedures used to establish the comparability of scores derived from the College Board Admissions Testing Program (ATP) computer adaptive Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) prototype and the paper-and-pencil SAT are described in this report. Both the prototype, which is made up of Verbal and Mathematics computer adaptive tests (CATs), and a form of…

This booklet contains released test items from the spring 2000 administration of the eighth grade mathematics and science tests of the Colorado Student Assessment Program. Items are released with the correct answers, and the scoring guide is included for selections from the constructed response portion of the science test. (SLD)

Because state mandated testing has become so important in indicating student achievement in mathematics, measurement has become equally important in indicating student achievement. At the other end of the continuum of assessment, constructivists advocate assessing student achievement within an ongoing lesson or unit of study. The everyday…

This paper presents a comparison of two commonly used methods, Angoff (W. Angoff, 1971) and Bookmark (D. Lewis, H. Mitzel, and D. Green, 1996), for setting cut scores on selected response tests. This comparison is presented through an application to a grade 7 mathematics assessment in a suburban Midwestern school district. Training and operational…

This study investigated whether raters in two different training groups would demonstrate halo error when each rater scored all five responses to five different mathematics performance-based items from each student. One group of 20 raters was trained by an experienced scoring director with item-specific scoring rubrics and the opportunity to…

Two operational item pools were used to investigate the performance of stratum computerized adaptive tests (CATs) when items were assigned to strata based on empirical estimates of item difficulty or human judgments of item difficulty. Items from the first data set consisted of 54 5-option multiple choice items from a form of the ACT mathematics…

The equivalence of multiple-choice (MC) and constructed response (discrete) (CR-D) response formats as applied to mathematics computation at grade levels two to six was tested. The difference between total scores from the two response formats was tested for statistical significance, and the factor structure of items in both response formats was…

The need for a mathematics placement test was acknowledged because a number of students registered in introductory algebra (Math 110) were struggling with problems involving only arithmetic operations. A placement test was selected with the intention to effectively detect students with arithmetic deficiencies and place them in a remedial…