This chapter addresses the psychometric challenges in assessing English language learners (ELLs) and students with disabilities (SWDs). The first section addresses some general considerations in the assessment of ELLs and SWDs, including the prevalence of ELLs and SWDs in the student population, federal and state legislation that requires the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on assessing individuals' problems in learning groups/teams and should lead to the assessment of the group/team itself as a learning entity. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, an extension of the IMS-Learning Design (IMS-LD) meta-model is proposed in order to support the assessment of…

Longitudinal change in the average Z scores for four groups of pupils sorted by quartiles was examined for its stability over three years. The data, collected from 1998 to 2009, was obtained from nine cohorts of Japanese junior high school pupils totaling 1,962 subjects. It showed illusionary declines among the mid-range pupils but improvements…

In high-stakes writing assessments, rater training in the use of a rating scale does not eliminate variability in grade attribution. This realisation has been accompanied by research that explores possible sources of rater variability, such as rater background or rating scale type. However, there has been little consideration thus far of…

Traditional methods for examining differential item functioning (DIF) in polytomously scored test items yield a single item-level index of DIF and thus provide no information concerning which score levels are implicated in the DIF effect. To address this limitation of DIF methodology, the framework of differential step functioning (DSF) has…

The purpose of this book is to make it possible for measurement specialists to solve practical testing problems through the use of item response theory (IRT). The topics, organization, and presentation are those used in a 4-week seminar held each summer for the past several years. The material is organized to facilitate understanding; all related…

Examines the appropriateness of a cut-off score derived from the Angoff procedure for a reading test in the United Kingdom. Shows that the recommended cut-off score is too low. Suggests ways that standard setting might draw on a range of information to produce appropriate and rationally defensible cut-off scores. (DSK)

Extensive education research on the contribution of teachers to student achievement produces two generally accepted results. First, teacher quality varies substantially as measured by the value added to student achievement or future academic attainment or earnings. Second, variables often used to determine entry into the profession and…

This experiment involved college students (N = 464) working on an authentic learning task (writing an essay) under 3 conditions: no feedback, detailed feedback (perceived by participants to be provided by the course instructor), and detailed feedback (perceived by participants to be computer generated). Additionally, conditions were crossed with 2…

Mounting pressure in the policy arena to improve teacher productivity either by improving signals that predict teacher performance or through creating incentive contracts based on performance--has spurred two related questions: Are there important determinants of teacher productivity that are not captured by teacher credentials but that can be…

Value-added models in education research allow researchers to explore how a wide variety of policies and measured school inputs affect the academic performance of students. Researchers typically quantify the impacts of such interventions in terms of "effect sizes", i.e., the estimated effect of a one standard deviation change in the…

Operating from multiple literature bases in cognitive psychology, mathematics education, and theoretical and applied psychometrics, Schilling, Hill and their colleagues provide a systemic approach to studying the validity of scores of mathematical knowledge for teaching. This system encompasses an array of task formats and methodologies. The…