Reviews three distinct research programs in the field of performance-based assessment that have the common goal of understanding its technical qualities and developing design strategies to use such qualities. Highlights common threads in findings that suggest a set of design strategies for future efforts at developing effective performance…

Presents examples of how standardized testing recognizes, constrains, or dismisses the multifaceted aspects of identities children bring to classrooms and influences the identities of teachers and psychologists whose actions are constrained by a culture that reproduces itself. Challenges readers to take up new models of assessment that not only…

Explores individual differences in general memory ability and the relation to performance in a public examination, taken at age 15-16 years. Suggests that individual differences in memory ability account for between 10 and 20 percent of the variance in groups of above-average IQ. Includes references. (CMK)

Discusses three purposes of tests and assessments in educational performance evaluation: providing information for the purpose of accounting to people outside of schools; providing information to teachers to help them improve instruction; and helping students learn. Also addressed are problems of test bias and the need to coordinate testing with…

In recent years, governments worldwide have increased their use of standardized tests and other forms of external tests to measure and report on student achievement in selected academic subjects. That trend, responding to public pressure on decision-makers to make school systems more transparent and accountable, is often colored by criticisms of…

Some of the challenges that test publishers face in constructing educational assessments that meet high technical quality as prescribed in the "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" (AERA, APA, NCME, 1999) are examined. Federal educational initiatives are used to illustrate demands on technical quality that challenge the efforts of…

The purpose of this article is to present a working definition of the term "culture," as well as to describe and demonstrate a comprehensive framework for evaluating hypotheses about cultural bias in educational testing. The framework is demonstrated using 5th-grade reading and language arts data from the Terra Nova test (CTB/McGraw-Hill, 1999).…

With the proliferation of computers in test delivery today, adaptive testing has become quite popular, especially when examinees must be classified into two categories (passfail, master nonmaster). Several well-established organisations have provided standards and guidelines for the design and evaluation of educational and psychological testing.…

Despite the prevalence of multiple choice items in educational testing, there is a dearth of empirical evidence for multiple choice item writing rules. The purpose of this study was to expand the base of empirical evidence by examining the use of the "all-of-the-above" option in a multiple choice examination in order to assess how…

This handbook will assist principals and school testing coordinators in implementing the spring 2007 administration of the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA). Information regarding administration timeline, reporting, process, online tools and contact personnel is discussed. Contents include: (1) Scheduling; (2) Identify Primary Test…

The current school reform era has moved through a series of phases, coupling state centralization with a focus on school-level change at each step. Yet this era of reform also has a deeper history. Its deeper history reveals the dynamics that would plague the school reform era until the present day. While the school reform era seemed to focus on…

This paper defines Bayesian network models and examines their applications to IRT-based cognitive diagnostic modeling. These models are especially suited to building inference engines designed to be synchronous with the finer grained student models that arise in skills diagnostic assessment. Aspects of the theory and use of Bayesian network models…

The accuracy of achievement test score inferences largely depends on the sensitivity of scores to instruction focused on tested objectives. Sensitivity requirements are particularly challenging for standards-based assessments because a variety of plausible instructional differences across classrooms must be detected. For this study, we developed a…

This paper details the motivation, background, and analysis for studying the effect that an Increasing Achievement on Algebra Assessment (IAAA) workshop for a group of Florida high school teachers had on student performance in state-wide testing. The main focus of the workshop was to provide participating teachers with both instruction and…

Now that standardized tests are a fact of life in every school and classroom, here's a book that explains how to use sample questions from high-stakes tests as the basis for constructing engaging lessons and meaningful learning experiences. Using samples from language arts, science, social studies, and math, Karen Tankersley familiarizes you with…