A widely used approach for categorizing the level of differential item functioning (DIF) in dichotomous items is the scheme proposed by Educational Testing Service (ETS) based on a transformation of the Mantel-Haeszel common odds ratio. In this article two classification schemes for DIF in polytomous items (referred to as the P1 and P2 schemes)…

Existing research posits multiple dimensions of bullying and victimization but has not identified well-differentiated facets of these constructs that meet standards of good measurement: goodness of fit, measurement invariance, lack of differential item functioning, and well-differentiated factors that are not so highly correlated as to detract…

This paper examines whether educational production in secondary school involves joint production among teachers across subjects. In doing so, it also provides insights into the reliability of value-added modeling. Teacher value-added to reading test scores is estimated for four different teacher types: English, math, science, and social studies.…

The Pennsylvania Governor's School for International Studies is an intensive summer program designed to give talented high school students a challenging introduction to the study of international affairs. One focus of the evaluation seeks to understand the effect of the program on the students' perception of their knowledge concerning core issues.…

When a test is adapted from a source language (SL) into a target language (TL), the two forms are usually not psychometrically equivalent. If linking between test forms is necessary, those items that have had their psychometric characteristics altered by the translation (differential item functioning [DIF] items) should be eliminated from the…

What is "fairness" in the context of educational assessment? I apply this question to a number of contemporary educational assessment practices and policies. My approach to philosophy of education owes much to Wittgenstein. A commentary set apart from the main body of the paper focuses on my style of philosophising. Wittgenstein teaches us to…

This study examines the incorrect response choices, or distractors, by students with disabilities in standardized reading assessments. Differential distractor functioning (DDF) analysis differs from differential item functioning (DIF) analysis, which treats all answers alike and examines all wrong answers against the correct answer. DDF analysis…

This article shows that measurement invariance (defined in terms of an invariant measurement model in different groups) is generally inconsistent with selection invariance (defined in terms of equal sensitivity and specificity across groups). In particular, when a unidimensional measurement instrument is used and group differences are present in…

Conventional data collection and analyses to evaluate opportunity to learn (OTL) is time and energy intensive. We propose an extension of an alternative approach suggested by Winfield (1993) by using a method to detect differential item functioning (DIF) to select items. These items are then used as initial indicators of possible difference in OTL…

The two authors conducted a small empirical study to attempt to find support for--or evidence against--the view that international tests of English language proficiency are unfair to speakers of non-standards forms of English, since these tests privilege standard forms. We explore the question of whose norms should be imposed in these tests, and…

This study examined gender, socio-economic (SES), and ethnic group differences in academic performance (measured at 14 and 16 years) in a sample of 517 British pupils (mean age = 16.5 years). White pupils outperformed their Black and Pakistani counterparts and high SES pupils consistently outperformed their low SES counterparts. Results from two…

In this essay, the author tries to look forward into the 21st century to divine three things: (i) What skills will researchers in the future need to solve the most pressing problems? (ii) What are some of the most likely candidates to be those problems? and (iii) What are some current areas of research that seem mined out and should not distract…

African-Americans and Whites were asked to solve problems typical of those administered on standard tests of intelligence. Half of the problems were solvable on the basis of information generally available to either race and/or on the basis of information newly learned. Such knowledge did not vary with race. Other problems were only solvable on…

This study examined potential differential examiner ratings for a large sample of self-identified Hispanics on the Woodcock Johnson Psychoeducational Battery-Third Edition (WJ-III) Test Session Observation Checklist (TSOC). Both between-group (Hispanics vs. non-Hispanics) and within-group analyses (Hispanics disaggregated by first spoken language,…

This article introduces a multinomial error model, which models an examinee's test scores obtained over repeated measurements of an assessment that consists of polytomously scored items. A compound multinomial error model is also introduced for situations in which items are stratified according to content categories and/or prespecified numbers of…