This report explores the ways in which human resource (HR) managers use "TOEIC"® scores to inform hiring, promotion, and training decisions in an international workplace. Two data sources were used (a) previously collected test users' testimonials that described managers' use of TOEIC scores to inform HR decisions and (b) test-use…

Educational administration is a rich domain of scholarship and practice, but one subject rarely discussed is its dark side. This study explored the question: What types of maladministration occur in schooling systems? The goal was to develop findings to inform existing prevention strategies. Focused on the Canadian context, data sources included…

Standardized testing is a defining feature of contemporary American society. It not only governs how people are channeled through their schooling; it amplifies existing social disparities. Nonetheless, standardized testing endures, namely because it has served as a vital tool for the post-1945 American state. The postwar state prioritized, on the…

This demonstration introduces and presents an innovative online cognitive diagnostic assessment, developed to identify the types of cognitive processes that readers use during comprehension; specifically, processes that distinguish between subtypes of struggling comprehenders. Cognitive diagnostic assessments are designed to provide valuable…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is an integral measure of academic progress over time. It is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what our nation's students know and can do in various subjects such as civics, mathematics, reading, science, technology and engineering literacy, U.S. history, and…

In validating uses of testing, it is helpful to distinguish those that rely directly on the information provided by scores or score distributions ("direct" uses and consequences) versus those that instead capitalize on the motivational effects of testing, or use testing and test reporting to shape public opinion ("indirect" uses and consequences).…

Preliminary findings indicate that positive relations between parents and teachers are associated with successful school outcomes for children. However, measures available to assess parent-teacher relations are scant. The current study examined validity evidence for the Parent-Teacher Relationship Scale-I (PTRS). Specifically, the internal…

In this rejoinder, the authors describe the aim of the original study as an effort to conduct a critical test of an important postulate underlying the Cross-Battery Assessment PSW approach (XBA PSW; Kranzler, Floyd, Benson, Zaboski, & Thibodaux, this issue). The authors used classification agreement analysis to examine the concordance between…

The tension between criterion-referenced and norm-referenced assessment is examined in the context of curriculum planning and assessment in outcomes-based approaches to higher education. This paper argues the importance of a criterion-referenced assessment approach once an outcomes-based approach has been adopted. It further discusses the…

As the most prestigious and popular standardized achievement test to certify examinees' proficiency of the English language at the national level, Foreign Language Examination (YDS) has been mostly taken by academic staff, undergraduate and graduate students, state employees, and military personnel for years in Turkey. The current study set out to…

Language assessment literacy (LAL) has become a critical topic in English language teaching since the late 1990s. Unfortunately, this is mainly due to the fact that so many English language teachers are not assessment literate. In other words, many English language teachers lack the knowledge and skills to write good language tests, evaluate the…

The number of public school students who are English learners (ELs) has been increasing steadily in the United States. According to a report by Snyder, de Brey, and Dillow (2016), in the 2014-2015 school year, nearly 4.6 million students enrolled in Kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) in U.S. schools were English learners, representing…

One urban district in the state of Arizona sought to use an alternative achievement test (i.e., the Northwest Evaluation Association's (NWEA) Measures of Academic Progress for Primary Grades (MAP)) to include more value-added ineligible teachers in the districts' growth and merit pay system. The goal was to allow for its K-2 teachers to be more…

This article examines the OECD's new PISA-based Test for Schools ("PISA for Schools") program. PISA for Schools is part of the expanding education work of the OECD, building upon main PISA to enable school-to-schooling system comparisons. We examine the development of PISA for Schools, the nature of the instrument, and some initial…

In the context of using tests for educational improvement, Haertel's article--"How Is Testing Supposed to Improve Schooling?"--highlights how the measurement field falls short on validation efforts and demonstrates how by posing the question of how testing is supposed to improve schooling one may start testing different hypotheses about the…