This guide is designed to give the student helpful information about Arizona's Instrument To Measure the Standards (AIMS) for high school. The guide provides examples of the type of questions students see on AIMS and explains how items are scored. It does not teach what the student needs to know to do well on AIMS, but it will help the student…

This publication contains released test items for grade 4 reading from the 2001 Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL). It is designed to assist teachers and administrators in the analysis of specific test items in order to identify patterns, trends, weaknesses, and strengths of student performance on the Essential Academic Learning…

This publication contains released test items for grade 10 reading from the 2001 Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL). It is designed to assist teachers and administrators in the analysis of specific test items in order to identify patterns, trends, weaknesses, and strengths of student performance on the Essential Academic Learning…

This document was designed and developed to supplement the "Mississippi Language Arts Framework 2000" and the Subject Area Testing Program (SATP) Teachers' Guide. This Intervention Guide is designed to help the teacher assess the progress of classes and individual students by assessment strand as reported in the SATP Class and SATP…

Math Sense consists of five books that develop from basic to more advanced math skills. This document contains a placement test used with Math Sense to help students and their teachers decide into which Math Sense book to begin working. The placement test is divided into six parts, each consisting of 10 to 22 problems, and is based on exit skill…

In computerized adaptive testing (CAT), new or experimental items are frequently administered alongside operational tests to gather the pretest data needed to replenish and replace item pools. The two basic strategies used to combine pretest and operational items are embedding and appending. Variable-length CATs are preferred because of the…

In the spring of 2000, public school eighth grade students will be assessed for the first time on the Colorado Model Content Standards for Science. This guide was developed to help educators prepare for the upcoming Colorado science assessment. The purpose of this book is to provide a window into eighth grade science assessment. This guide is…

This addendum was created to reflect the recommendations of the Mathematics Task Force that met in Arizona to make recommendations to the state Board of Education. The Mathematics Task Force recommended that a core curriculum be identified in the Mathematics Proficiency Standards that would be required of all high school students beginning in the…

New ways are proposed to look at data from the Canadian School Achievement Indicators Program (SAIP) using item response theory (IRT) modeling. The focus is on the traditional test of the SAIP 1997 mathematics study. The test is two-staged in that the first 15 items, of median difficulty, were to be completed beforehand by all students as a…

The first purpose of this study is to do a comparative analysis in terms of the item difficulty and discrimination index between Mathematics Placement Test Form A and G. The results seem to suggest that items on both forms of the placement test are equally difficult. However, items on form A appear to have more discrimination power than items on…

Differential item functioning (DIF) occurs when the responses of students with approximately equal ability differ systematically based on their group membership. Idaho contracted with the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) to provide the Idaho Standards Achievement Tests of reading, language arts and mathematics at grades 4, 8 and 10. The…

As an admissions test, the SAT II: Subject Tests in foreign languages allow students to demonstrate academic competence in the selected language area. As a placement tool, the SAT II: Subject Tests in foreign languages serve the same function as the SAT II: Subject Tests do in other academic areas such as world history, chemistry, or math. SAT II:…

A Monte Carlo design examined how the effects of guessing and item dependence influence test characteristics and student scores. Although validity for cloze variants was high, multiple-choice cloze had significantly lower reliabilities than did true score equivalents. (Author/PN)

Discusses the criteria for an effective diagnotic assessment system. Describes efforts to produce a systematic, flexible assessment system for Foundation-level science. Presents a model for science practical skills, a categorized list of practical skills objectives, and some practical test items. Discusses the relationship between criteria and…

Statistical bias in measurement and ethnic-group bias in testing are discussed, reviewing predictive and construct validity studies. Item bias is reconceptualized to include distance of item content from respondent's experience. Differing values of mean and standard deviation for bias parameter are analyzed in a simulation. References are…