The New York State Board of Regents has committed to the transformation of the preparation, support and evaluation of all teachers and school leaders in New York State, and the New York State Legislature has enacted historic legislation (Education Law §3012-c) that fundamentally changes the way teachers and principals are evaluated. Under the new…

AIR is working with states and districts across the country to improve teacher evaluation and feedback. Our work is focused on designing systems of educator evaluation and compensation that incorporate multiple measures of performance and, in particular, measures of student growth. In this work, student learning objectives (SLOs) have emerged as a…

To rule out the need for a two-parameter item response theory (IRT) model during item analysis by Rasch models, it is important to check the Rasch model's assumption that all items have the same item discrimination. Biserial and polyserial correlation coefficients measuring the association between items and restscores are often used in an informal…

Superintendents and principals can have a positive and decisive impact on student achievement and higher graduation rates. Their essential leadership can illuminate the path to excellence for faculty and students. In upgrading curriculum and instruction, school leaders need to keep abreast of practices proven effective in other districts and…

At the heart of most assessments lies a set of questions, and those who write them must achieve "two" things. Not only must they ensure that each question elicits the kind of performance that shows how "good" pupils are at the subject, but they must also ensure that each mark scheme gives more marks to those who are…

The Big Bang: UK Young Scientists' and Engineers' Fair is an annual three-day event designed to promote science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) careers to young people aged 7-19 through experiential learning. It is supported by stakeholders from business and industry, government and the community, and brings together people from various…

This paper describes how a state education system in Australia introduced standards-referenced assessments into its large-scale, high-stakes, curriculum-based examinations in a way that enables comparison of performance across time even though the examinations are different each year. It describes the multi-stage modified Angoff standard-setting…

Throughout classrooms in the United States there appears to have been a general watering down of academic standards. The percentages of "A" and "B" grades have risen, and at some schools, the percentage of grades of "C" or lower has plummeted. Numerous scholarly articles about grade inflation discuss the extent,…

The need to determine eligibility for a program for intellectually gifted students resulted in combining deviation scores on achievement, aptitude, ability and motivation measures into a matrix score. These matrix scores and the students' success in the program were determined for present participants. Students were classified as successful or…

The High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) is the fifth in a series of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) secondary longitudinal studies. The core research questions for HSLS:09 explore secondary to postsecondary transition plans and the evolution of those plans; the paths into and out of science, technology, engineering,…

Many studies of the United States voting have sought to explain why voter participation is declining. Recent research by Michael P. McDonald suggests that the much lamented "decline in voter participation" is an artifact of the way in which turnout rates have been measured. McDonald is an assistant professor of government and politics in…

Describes a new system for scoring informal reading inventories that helps eliminate problems inherent in other scoring systems. (DD)

For (0, 1) scored multiple-choice tests, a formula giving test reliability as a function of the number of item options is derived, assuming the "knowledge or random guessing model," the parallelism of the new and old tests (apart from the guessing probability), and the assumptions of classical test theory. It is shown that the formula is a more…

Features of a probabilistic testing system that has been implemented on the "cerl" PLATO computer system are described. The key feature of the system is the manner in which an examinee responds to each test item; the examinee distributes probabilities among the alternatives of each item by positioning a small square on or within an…

The passage of the No Child Left Behind Act and subsequent regulations have challenged state education agencies (SEAs) in many ways and ensuring the appropriate inclusion of students with disabilities has been a unique challenge. The recent publication of regulations on alternate assessments with alternate achievement standards (34 CFR Part 200)…