Procedures for establishing standards and determining the number of items needed in criterion referenced measures were reviewed. Discussion of setting a passing score was organized around: performance of others, item content, educational consequences, psychological and financial costs, and error due to guessing and item sampling. (Author)

In mastery testing a linear relationship between an optimal passing score and test length is presented with a new optimization criterion. The usual indifference zone approach, a binomial error model, decision errors, and corrections for guessing are discussed. Related results in sequential testing and the latent class approach are included. (CM)