Establishing a cut score is a crucial aspect of the test development process since the selected cut score has the potential to impact students' performance outcomes and shape instructional strategies within the classroom. Therefore, it is vital for those involved in test development to set a cut score that is both fair and justifiable. This cut…

The Nebraska Student-Centered Assessment System (NSCAS) is a statewide assessment system that embodies Nebraska's holistic view of students and helps them prepare for success in postsecondary education, career, and civic life. It uses multiple measures throughout the year to provide educators and decision-makers at all levels with the insights…

Throughout the world, cut scores are an important aspect of a high-stakes testing program because they are a key operational component of the interpretation of test scores. One method for setting standards that is prevalent in educational testing programs--the Bookmark method--is intended to be a less cognitively complex alternative to methods…

In their article "Innovations in Setting Performance Standards for K-12 Test-Based Accountability," Kristen Huff and Barbara S. Plake (2010) lay out three preconditions for continued investment in standard-setting methodology and practice, all focused on the sound development and use of achievement level descriptors (ALDs). Among these…

Standard setting is a systematic process that uses a combination of judgmental and empirical procedures to make recommendations about where on the score continuum "cut scores" should be placed. Cut scores divide the score scale into categories consistent with the descriptions of student performance associated with multiple levels of achievement.…

In four articles adapted from the Educational Testing Service (ETS) Research Report Series, Issue 2 of ETS Research Spotlight provides a small taste of the range of assessment-related research capabilities of the ETS Research and Development Division. Those articles cover assessment-related research aimed at developing models of student learning,…

This paper examines the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which has become a major and influential component of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) educational work. This measure of comparative performance of educational systems of member and other nations is based on tests commissioned by the…

Although the Angoff procedure is among the most widely used standard setting procedures for tests comprising multiple-choice items, research has shown that subject matter experts have considerable difficulty accurately making the required judgments in the absence of examinee performance data. Some authors have viewed the need to provide…

This study examined the relationships between the evaluations obtained from standard setting panelists and changes in ratings between different rounds of a standard setting study that involved setting standards on different language versions of an exam. We investigated panelists' evaluations to determine if their perceptions of the standard…

Psychometricians continue to introduce new approaches to setting cut scores for educational assessments in an attempt to improve on current methods. In this paper we describe the Item-Descriptor (ID) Matching method, a method based on IRT item mapping. In ID Matching, test content area experts match items (i.e., their judgments about the knowledge…

This report focuses on two aspects of teacher supply and quality: (a) the under-representation of racial/ethnic minorities, especially African Americans in the teaching pool, and (b) teacher candidates' performance on licensure assessments, including general skills tests in reading, writing, and mathematics (known as Praxis I[R]) and selected…

The current school reform era has moved through a series of phases, coupling state centralization with a focus on school-level change at each step. Yet this era of reform also has a deeper history. Its deeper history reveals the dynamics that would plague the school reform era until the present day. While the school reform era seemed to focus on…

This volume contains an edited transcript of the Rockefeller Institute's October 29, 2007 symposium (Chicago, IL) entitled "Intergovernmental Approaches to Strengthen K-12 Accountability Systems" as well as a framework paper circulated in preparation for the symposium. The transcript begins with a list of the forty state and federal education…

At the heart of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is the call for all students to be "proficient" in reading and mathematics by 2014. Yet the law expects each state to define proficiency as it sees fit and design its own tests. This study investigated three research questions related to this policy: (1) How consistent are various…