As low-stakes testing contexts increase, low test-taking effort may serve as a serious validity threat. One common solution to this problem is to identify noneffortful responses and treat them as missing during parameter estimation via the effort-moderated item response theory (EM-IRT) model. Although this model has been shown to outperform…

New MAP® Growth™ assessments are being developed that administer items more closely matched to the grade level of the student. However, MAP Growth items are calibrated with samples that typically consist of students from a variety of grades, including the target grade to which an item is aligned. While this choice of calibration sample is…