In this article we present results from a study investigating the impact of three state exit exam systems on teaching and learning in college-preparatory schools. The study compares one state with a traditionally more centralized exam regime, one state that is more de-centralized and one state that has recently switched to more centralized…

While research suggests that formative assessment can be a powerful tool to support teaching and learning, efforts to jump on the formative assessment bandwagon have been more widespread than those to assure the technical quality of the assessments. This report covers initial analyses of data bearing on the quality of formative assessments in…

Statewide exit examinations play an important role in discussions on school effectiveness. Referring to educational governance concepts, this paper presumes a relation between varying organizational structures of statewide examinations across states, and heterogeneous effects on school actors. It is assumed that their ability to affect work in…

Although millions of dollars and weeks of instructional time are spent nationally on testing students, educators often have little information on how to choose appropriate assessments of adolescent reading for informing instruction. This guide is designed to meet that need, by drawing together evidence about nine of the most commonly-used,…

Evaluation of teaching effectiveness is considered a critical element in determining whether or not faculty members are retained at higher education institutions; academic milestones such as tenure and promotion often require documentation of the quality of faculty teaching. As methods of assessing teaching effectiveness evolve, concerns about the…

This exploratory study was built on research spanning three decades. Petersen, Marco, and Stewart (1982) conducted a major empirical investigation of the efficacy of different equating methods. The studies reported in Dorans (1990) examined how different equating methods performed across samples selected in different ways. Recent population…

Students at the University of Edinburgh do almost all their work on computers, but at the end of the semester they are examined by handwritten essays. Intuitively it would be appealing to allow students the choice of handwriting or typing, but this raises a concern that perhaps this might not be "fair"--that the choice a student makes,…

In educational measurement, the construction of parallel test forms is often a combinatorial optimization problem that involves the time-consuming selection of items to construct tests having approximately the same test information functions (TIFs) and constraints. This article proposes a novel method, genetic algorithm (GA), to construct parallel…

Evaluated the alternate forms reliability of new versus old tasks of the Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS) (A. Fisher, 1993). Participants were 44 persons from the AMPS database. Results support good alternate forms reliability of the motor and process ability measures and suggest that the newly calibrated tasks can be used reliably in…

In this article, Structural communication grid (SCG), an alternative measurement and evaluation technique, has been firstly summarised and the design, development and implementation of a computer based SCG system have been introduced. The system is then tested on a sample of 154 participants consisting of candidate students, science teachers and…

Multiple choice questions that could logically provide two or more choices block the expression of judgment, thereby suppressing measurement of learning and failing to provide feedback to students and teachers. This study compares the effects of content identical multiple choice and multiple true false items on students' decision. (MT)

Many psychology instructors present videotaped examples of behavior at least occasionally during their courses. However, few include video clips during examinations. We provide examples of video-based questions, offer guidelines for their use, and discuss their benefits and drawbacks. In addition, we provide empirical evidence to support the use…

The feasibility of using linear and equipercentile equating methods (W. H. Angoff, 1984) to equate forms of the Test of Written English (TWE) by using the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) as an anchor was explored. These two equating methods assume that either the TOEFL test and TWE test measure the same skills or that the examinee…

Equating a test form to itself through a chain of equatings, commonly referred to as circular equating, has been widely used as a criterion to evaluate the adequacy of equating. This paper uses both analytical methods and simulation methods to show that this criterion is in general invalid in serving this purpose. For the random groups design done…

Of four groups of medical-surgical nurses, 55 took one final and three midterm written exams, 150 took one each (written), 45 took an oral final, 92 took both written and oral, and 47 took a written test with licensure questions and an oral final. Oral exams resulted in higher scores, more effective study habits, and increased application. (SK)