The experience of the Colorado Springs (Colorado) Public Schools (CSPS) in using different assessment forms for different purposes is detailed. A small niche is reserved for national norm-referenced testing to fill the state achievement testing mandate and for Chapter 1 accountability. A second, and larger, part of the assessment program will be…

In the 1992 mathematics assessment of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), approximately one-third of the questions and about half of the student response time were devoted to questions asking students to construct their own responses. Regular constructed response items required a short answer with a problem solution, while…

As a result of the dual roles of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to measure trends in academic achievement over time and to measure what students know and can do, a scale anchoring procedure was developed. Although the NAEP provides norm-referenced information about student proficiency, the scale anchoring procedure gives…

Testwise responses of grade-school students to multiple-choice science items and the intercorrelations between different testwiseness skills were examined in this document. A total of 134 third-grade, 133 fifth-grade, and 143 sixth-grade students from two elementary schools in a large suburban school district in Utah responded to 60 science items…

After a brief review of recent research concerning teacher testing, this paper presents concrete examples of multiple-choice test items that assess more than teachers' minimal, basic knowledge. Specifically, multiple-choice test items used for the assessment of pedagogical content knowledge (C-P items) are contrasted with items used for the…

Teacher-made mastery tests were administered in a classroom-sized sample to study their decision consistency. Decision-consistency of criterion-referenced tests is usually defined in terms of the proportion of examinees who are classified in the same way after two test administrations. Single-administration estimates of decision consistency were…

The language arts objective-item bank contains 100 objectives each represented by five to eight multiple choice items. Grade levels covered are one through eight. The objectives deal with such topics as composition, grammar, literature, phonetic analysis, reading comprehension, structural analysis, study and research skills, vocabulary, and…

An activity was undertaken to develop written criterion-referenced tests for the agricultural resources component of Applied Principles of Agribusiness and Natural Resources. Intended for tenth grade students who have completed Fundamentals of Agribusiness and Natural Resources Occupations, applied principles were designed to consist of three…

The validity and reliability of two techniques of assessing writing proficiency were compared in a sample of 300 South African students (in Standard 8) for whom English was a second language. The objective, multiple choice method was compared with a subjective, essay method. Students completed a Standard English Second Language Item Bank Test and…

Test specifications for the Texas Examination of Current Administrators and Teachers (TECAT) are presented in detail. These specifications are designed to help teachers prepare for the TECAT, and should also be made available to administrators and persons preparing review courses. This test focuses on reading and writing skills. In the test…

This study examines the relationship between an open-ended cloze test and its multiple-choice versions generated from three sources: (1) interlingual learner-generated distractors--distractors selected from one language group and administered to a different language group, (2) intralingual learner-generated distractors--distractors selected from…

This primer is an introduction to item response theory (also called item characteristic curve theory, or latent trait theory) as it is used most commonly--for scoring multiple choice achievement or aptitude tests. Written for the testing practitioner with minimum training in statistics and psychometrics, it presents and illustrates the basic…

This report provides background on statewide student testing and testing alternatives in Ohio. The status of achievement testing in other states is also discussed. Educational testing historically has included the two strands of intelligence testing and achievement testing. This report focuses on achievement testing. The two basic forms are…

Current proposals for national testing are either for national multiple-choice tests in which all students would take the same test or for a system of performance-based examinations calibrated to national standards. The Bush administration's proposals, as enunciated in "America 2000," embrace both types, beginning with administration of…

Despite the number of studies investigating affective aspects of test taking, little is known about how students perceive the kinds of extended performance assessments currently being developed for state and local testing programs. This paper presents two studies that address these issues. In the first, hands-on science tasks were administered to…