This document describes the development of an instrument designed to assess the implementation of a professional learning community among school staff. It describes the growing need for such instruments as schools increasingly deviate from traditional approaches in education in their efforts to enhance student learning. An instrument that could be…

This paper proposes a new Information-Time index as the basis for item selection in computerized classification testing (CCT) and investigates how this new item selection algorithm can help improve test efficiency for item pools with mixed item types. It also investigates how practical constraints such as item exposure rate control, test…

A new instrument was designed by S. Hord (1996) to assess globally the maturity of a school's professional staff as a learning community. The Appalachia Educational Laboratory agreed to field test this instrument to determine its reliability and validity and to draw conclusions about its use in educational improvement. The instrument consisted of…

The "CSE Program Evaluation Kit" is a series of nine books intended to assist people conducting program evaluations. This volume, sixth in the kit, is designed to help an evaluator select or design credible instruments to measure attitudes. The book discusses problems involved in measuring attitudes, including people's sensitivity about this kind…

This "toolbox" offers suggestions about how and when to create objective tests. Such tests are sometimes a quick way to find out how students are doing, and sometimes they help students focus on what they are doing in class or help teachers define the content that is worth knowing. The following suggestions are offered for developing objective…

This paper proposes a framework for discussing the objectives and content of the next Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) in school year 1999-2000. The framework focuses on school reform and the information SASS can collect to inform the United States about school reform efforts. Major reform agenda and expert opinion are reviewed, and the issues…

At the request of the Massachusetts Department of Education, Achieve, Inc., conducted an evaluation of the state's K-12 mathematics standards and grade 10 Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests in English language arts and mathematics during the spring and summer of 2001. The state's English Language Arts standards were not…

This study was conducted to measure the development of critical thinking in college students through the creation of instruments to measure critical thinking skills. A Critical Thinking Assessment (CTA) was developed based on other such instruments and the literature. This instrument was tested in a pilot study involving 750 incoming university…

The Continuous School Improvement Questionnaire (CSIQ) is a comprehensive inventory measuring educators' perceptions of factors that affect success with school improvement. A pilot test of the CSIQ was conducted in Spring 2000, one purpose of which was to reduce the length of the CSIQ. The instrument was reduced from 147 to 72 items. The pilot…

This paper focuses on a version of sequential mastery testing (i.e., classifying students as a master/nonmaster or continuing testing and administering another item or testlet) in which response behavior is modeled by a multidimensional item response theory (IRT) model. First, a general theoretical framework is outlined that is based on a…

Most computerized tests are simple applications that make limited use of the technology inherent in computer-delivered examinations. One potentially valuable feature of computer-administered examinations is the ability to play audio files, a function that makes it possible to incorporate sound into computer-based tests. Audio tests allow the…

As part of the test development process, this technical report is intended to present technical information from the tryout and the pilot stages of the Michigan High School Proficiency Test (HSPT) in Communication Arts: Reading. There are four major parts to this report. Part 1, Evolution of the HSPT in Communication Arts: Reading, introduces the…

As part of the test development process, this technical report is intended to present technical information from the tryout and pilot stages of the Michigan High School Proficiency Test (HSPT) in Communication Arts: Writing. There are four major parts to this report. Part 1, Evolution of the HSPT in Communication Arts: Writing, introduces the…

The purpose of this study is to compare the effectiveness of three types of practices applied in Korea in enhancing the validity and equivalency of test instruments when cross-cultural adaptation of attitude measures is necessary. The three types of practices are: (1) translation and review (translation version); (2) translation, back translation,…

Chapters in this book present the challenges and dilemmas faced by researchers as they created new computerized assessments, focusing on issues addressed in developing, scoring, and administering the assessments. Chapters are: (1) "Beyond Bells and Whistles; An Introduction to Computerized Assessment" (Julie B. Olson-Buchanan and Fritz Drasgow);…