Over the past 30 years, more and more independent schools have established academic support programs and learning centers to address their students' individual learning needs. Perhaps not surprisingly, as the number of students being evaluated has increased, even more families have requested academic accommodations and services for their children.…

This article focuses on the tensions between national and international testing, educational policy and professionalism for middle school English teachers. I argue that state and federal government(s) are responding to the impact of Australia's falling results on the international testing in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment)…

Currently, too few people have too much influence over those who control the education research purse strings. And, those who control the purse strings have too much influence over policy decisions. Until folk at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the US Education Department--to mention just a couple of consistent funders of education…

At the outset of his thoughtful and thought-provoking article, Haertel (this issue) clearly identifies the issue with which he will be dealing: The disjunct, or gap, in current approaches to evaluating the merits of a given test, between the intended uses of that test and the validity of its score-based interpretations. The author thinks that…

Emerging technology and research on learning have the potential to dramatically improve assessments, if educators and policymakers take a more balanced approach to using them. That's the conclusion of two years of analysis by the Gordon Commission on the Future of Assessment in Education, a panel of top education research and policy experts that…

This three-volume handbook is a comprehensive presentation of the theory and application of tests in psychology and education. It begins with an in-depth portrayal of psychometrics: the quantitative underpinning of testing. It then provides thorough, up-to-date and informative chapters related to five general application areas of testing: (1)…

Multilevel models (MLMs) are flexible in that they can be employed to obtain item and person parameters, test for differential item functioning (DIF) and capture both local item and person dependence. Papers on the MLM analysis of item response data have focused mostly on theoretical issues where applications have been add-ons to simulation…

The first large-scale, nationwide academic achievement testing program using Stanford Achievement Test (Stanford) for deaf and hard-of-hearing children in the United States started in 1969. Over the past three decades, the Stanford has served as a benchmark in the field of deaf education for assessing student academic achievement. However, the…

The field of educational testing has become increasingly important for providing different stakeholders and decision-makers with information. This paper discusses basic standards for methodological approaches used in measuring literacy skills among adults. The authors address the increasing interest in skills measurement, the discourses on how…

The purpose of this study was to examine the difference in student success by retained students who participate in the Hamblen County (Tennessee) Credit Recovery Program [HCCRP] in the year prior and following their participation. HCCRP is an alternative intervention for students who have been retained in the middle grades of Hamblen County School…

In 2012, Edward Haertel received the NCME Career Contributions Award. The focus article for this issue emerged from his address on the topic "How Is Testing Supposed to Improve Schooling?" His focus article provides a discussion of the relationships between testing and schooling in which he issues a call to action to the measurement community to…

In his article, Haertel (this issue) asks a fundamental question about how use of a test is expected to cause improvements in the educational system and in learning. He also considers how test validity should be investigated and argues for a more expansive view of validity that does not stop with scoring or generalization (the more technical and…

In his thoughtful focus article, Haertel (this issue) pushes testing experts to broaden the scope of their validation efforts and to invite scholars from other disciplines to join them. He credits existing validation frameworks for helping the measurement community to identify incomplete or nonexistent validity arguments. However, he notes his…

The author is deeply gratified by the commentators' thoughtful responses and finds almost nothing to disagree with in any of them. Each offers additional insights prompting further reflection. In drawing out just a few common themes, this brief rejoinder omits many important ideas from the individual contributions. As stated in his title, the…

For years now, educators have looked to international tests as a yardstick to measure how well students from the United States are learning compared with their peers. The answer has been: not so well. The United States has been falling further behind other nations and has struggled with a large achievement gap. Federal policy under No Child Left…