This report is the product of the first year of study of the Statewide Systemic Initiatives (SSI) Study on exploring data and methods to assess and understand the performance of states participating in the SSI. The report describes three sets of studies. The first studied valid and reliable measures of student achievement, and how to combine…

The second edition of "Foundations of Psychological Testing: A Practical Approach" is a text for undergraduate students new to the field of psychological testing. Using a conversational format, the authors aim to prepare students to be informed consumers as test users or test takers. Features new to the second edition include: (1) New Content; (2)…

One of the tasks of the Council for School Performance is to implement measures of school safety to determine the impact of Georgia Lottery for Education expenditures. During the 1994-95 school year, the council pilot-tested several indicators of school safety. This document presents the results of an evaluation that examined the relevance,…

As schools move toward performance assessment, there is increasing discussion of using these assessments for accountability purposes. When used for making decisions, performance assessments must meet high standards of validity and reliability. One major source of unreliability in performance assessments is interrater disagreement. In this paper,…

This paper compares two methods of establishing content validity, forced-choice judgmental review and a latent category judgmental review. It also compares content validity evidence with the results of a scale reliability analysis and makes recommendations of the two content validity procedures. Two different groups of graduate students enrolled…

This paper reports on an assessment of the cognitive skills section of the "Test of Communication Knowledge." The test was designed by Dr. Rebecca B. Rubin to evaluate learning by undergraduate communication majors in the School of Communication Studies at Kent State University (Ohio). In particular, the test is based on a set of…

Continuing education students are usually mature students who have a wealth of experience from which their peers and the lecturer could profit. An effective teaching method with such students is the use of cooperative work assignments, but a problem that prevents lecturers from using this method is the difficulty of assigning grades to individual…

This technical report focuses on the decision-making potential provided by second language performance assessments. First, performance assessment is situated within the broader discussion of alternatives in language assessment and in educational assessment in general. Next, issues in performance assessment design, implementation, reliability, and…

This paper focuses on how best to evaluate student achievement in science. Many issues such as issues of test construction, validity, and reliability, and how to measure hands-on achievement must be considered. Qualitative evaluations are harder to explain, but can yield valuable information. The use of portfolios is an example of a technique that…

The purposes of this study were to devise and provide validity and reliability data for scores on an instrument measuring attitudes toward school violence and to develop importance ratings of the items based on data from teachers in a high school that had experienced a highly publicized violent episode. Two independent samples were used. Based on…

This study investigated preservice, inservice, and college teachers' reasons for making assessment and grading decisions. A survey examined their perspectives about a case study that presented a grading dilemma in which a teacher, "Sarah", assigned grades based on criteria that were potentially invalid and unreliable. Participants analyzed the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of local item dependence (LID) in passage-based testlets on the test score reliability of an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) reading comprehension test from the perspective of generalizability (G) theory. Definitions and causes of LID in passage-based testlets are reviewed within the…

This paper reports on a study that investigated the reliability and validity of a school-environment measuring instrument: the School Level Environment Questionnaire (SLEQ). Results were compared to teachers' and principals' perceptions of actual and ideal school environments. The questionnaire was sent to 60 schools throughout Australia where it…

An instrument to evaluate the effectiveness of constructivist teaching methods, the Constructivist Teaching Inventory (CTI), was developed and assessed, the assessment focusing on the validity and reliability of the instrument. A pool of items measuring the presence of identified elements of constructivist teaching was developed; items were…

This boxed set contains a wide-range, comprehensive set of tests for measuring reading achievement and related abilities. The tests are administered individually, and norms are provided from age 4 to age 90. Special college/university norms are also provided. It consists of 10 measures. The scores from different combinations of these tests provide…