The choice of anchor tests is crucial in applications of the nonequivalent groups with anchor test design of equating. Sinharay and Holland (2006, 2007) suggested "miditests," which are anchor tests that are content-representative and have the same mean item difficulty as the total test but have a smaller spread of item difficulties.…

This paper illustrates that the psychometric properties of scores and scales that are used with mixed-format educational tests can impact the use and interpretation of the scores that are reported to examinees. Psychometric properties that include reliability and conditional standard errors of measurement are considered in this paper. The focus is…

Discusses three common misconceptions about achievement testing: (1) the idea that men generally outscore women; (2) the notion that the primary role of norms is to compare one student to another; and (3) the misconception that it is not possible to measure the achievement of kindergarten and primary grade students with group tests. (SLD)

Research on true-false (TF), multiple-choice, and alternate-choice (AC) tests is reviewed, discussing strengths, weaknesses, and the usefulness in classroom and large-scale testing of each. Recommendations are made for improving use of AC items to overcome some of the problems associated with TF items. (SLD)

Data from large-scale international studies for 13 countries indicate that U.S. students are clearly not the most heavily tested students on earth if one compares systemwide tests by their duration. In the United States, tests are much more likely to be of low consequence for the student. (SLD)

Proposed an accountably model that addresses the challenges of allowing school districts to choose the specific strategies they use to measure student performance and evaluated this model using data from multiple sources for all school districts in Florida. Findings identify three strategies that would be useful for this type of accountability…

Findings are summarized from a comparative analysis of education-examination practices in selected European and Asian countries. The review of testing practices in other countries reveals that these practices are in transition in most countries. A central lesson is that changing teaching can lead to changes in testing. (SLD)

The testing practices and tests described in the preceding articles are reviewed and compared. This cross-cultural examination identifies some issues that are common to the United States and Europe: (1) the emphasis on performance tasks, (2) the accommodation of language minorities, and (3) concerns about gender differences. (SLD)