While linear programming is a common tool in business and industry, there have not been many applications in educational assessment and only a handful of individuals have been actively involved in conducting psychometric research in this area. Perhaps this is due, at least in part, to the complexity of existing software packages. This article…

The question of how to estimate school and teacher contributions to student learning is fundamental to educational policy and practice, and the three thoughtful articles in this issue represent a major advance. The current level of public confusion about these issues is so severe and the consequences for schooling so great that it is a big relief…

The estimation and evaluation of the effects of alternative educational or social policies is a major purpose of decision oriented, comparative evaluation studies. This paper reviews the rationale underlying the definition and interpretation of various measures of effect magnitude and examines their relevance to evalution research. (Author)

Although differential item functioning (DIF) theory traditionally focuses on the behavior of individual items in two (or a few) specific groups, in educational measurement contexts, it is often plausible to regard the set of items as a random sample from a broader category. This article presents logistic mixed models that can be used to model…

Using the analogy of temperature measurement, the Rasch model is presented with arguments for its adoption as the basic scaling technique for achievement measures. Three extensions of the Rasch model for more complex testing are developed. Test development for the British national assessment program and the promise of item banking are also…

The potential value of developing item banks that would both guarantee the quality of teacher-made examinations and allow for national comparison of student achievement is described. Use of Rasch model methods, rather than classical item analysis techniques, to calibrate the items for these banks is illustrated. (BS)

Scaling methodologies used in analysis of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) surveys since 1984 are reviewed. The plausible values methodology developed for NAEP scale-score analyses is described in the contexts of item response theory and average response method scaling. Current NAEP research in scaling is discussed. (SLD)

This document contains the framework and a set of recommendations for the NAEP 2007 mathematics assessment, which will assess student achievement nationally and state-by-state, as well as in select urban districts, in grades 4 and 8. It includes descriptions of the mathematical content of the test, the types of test questions, and recommendations…