There is a growing emphasis on the right to and the benefits of education for young people within refugee camps. The benefits include physical and cognitive protection as well as the promotion of a sense of normalcy and feelings of hope. Minimum standards for refugee youth have been developed, which the authors argue should be used by not only by…

This paper provides a critical analysis of New Zealand's Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF). The first section sketches the development and implementation of the PBRF. The second section evaluates the scheme, concentrating on three themes: the relationship between privatization, competition and research performance; the standardization of…

The objective of this study was to determine the degree to which recommendations for passing scores, calculated on the basis of a traditional standard-setting methodology, might be affected by the mode (paper versus computer-screen prints) in which test items were presented to standard setting panelists. Results were based on the judgments of 31…

There is widespread agreement that theories of teaching, learning, and assessment should be consistent with a certain theory of learning, whether it be constructivism or some other theory. This paper describes the creation and development of the working draft of the assessment standards for school mathematics published by the National Council of…

In 1991 the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) released a report interpreting the achievement of U.S. students in mathematics on the 1990 National Assessment of Educational Progress in terms of a set of performance standards. The NAGB had been designing and implementing an approach to defining basic, proficient, and advanced levels of…

Setting performance standards on constructed-response assessments involving polytomously scored exercises presents a challenge for measurement practitioners. Some standard setting methods designed for use with multiple-choice, dichotomously scored assessments entail aggregating item performance estimates across a panel of experts. For these items,…

Four procedures were used to estimate a criterion-referenced standard for a multiple-choice examination developed by the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME). Two experimental procedures, the NBME method and a modification of the Guerin method, and the Angoff and Ebel procedures were evaluated on the consistency of the estimates they…

The accuracy of standards obtained from judgmental methods is dependent on the quality of the judgments made by experts throughout the standard setting process. One important dimension of the quality of these judgments is the consistency of the judges' perceptions with item performance of minimally competent candidates. Several interrelated…

This special issue covers recent technical developments in the field of criterion-referenced testing. An introduction, six papers, and two commentaries dealing with test development, test score uses, and evaluation of scores review relevant literature, offer new models and/or results, and suggest directions for additional research. (SLD)

Minimum standards were established for the National Teacher Examinations (NTE) by teacher educators instructed in the use of the Angoff, Nedelsky, or Jaeger procedures. The anticipated failure rates, the psychometric characteristics of the ratings, and other factors suggest the Angoff procedure yields the most defensible standards for the NTE area…

This report examines the history of standards in teacher education, sketching the results of major studies and projects that have recommended standards for teacher education. The report offers a definition of standards, examples of standard-setting efforts over the years, efforts by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education,…

A study was conducted to examine the attitudes of elementary, middle/junior high, and high school counselors toward the development of national standards for school counseling programs. An effort was also made to identify the components counselors thought should be included in the national standards. Input from leaders of the American School…

Whether differences in the standards states have set can be explained by something other than regional differences is explored. In addition, a way in which standards can be compared is defined, and the standard of proficiency that seems to be widely shared across the country is illustrated. The Trial State Assessment (TSA) data from the National…

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 guide provides an outline of the components necessary in a written evaluation plan for vocational education programs. The four components that a plan for evaluation should include are described. The first component, the specific goals of the evaluation process, is divided into these two sections determined by the type of evaluation conducted:…