One common phenomenon in Angoff standard setting is that panelists regress their ratings in toward the middle of the probability scale. This study describes two indices based on taking ratios of standard deviations that can be utilized with a scatterplot of item ratings versus expected probabilities of success to identify whether ratings are…

An Angoff standard setting study generally yields judgments on a number of items by a number of judges (who may or may not be nested in panels). Variability associated with judges (and possibly panels) contributes error to the resulting cut score. The variability associated with items plays a more complicated role. To the extent that the mean item…

Recently, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (Smarter Balanced) released a document that established initial performance levels and the associated threshold scale scores for the Smarter Balanced assessment. The report included estimated percentages of students expected to perform at each of the four performance levels, reported by grade…

The ACT College Readiness Benchmarks are the ACT scores associated with a 50% chance of earning a B or higher grade in selected first-year credit-bearing courses at a typical postsecondary institution. The Benchmarks were established by linking ACT test scores with grades in first-year college courses from the same subject area. Benchmarks were…

In 2011, the College Board released its SAT college and career readiness benchmark, which represents the level of academic preparedness associated with a high likelihood of college success and completion. The goal of this study, which was conducted in 2008, was to establish college success criteria to inform the development of the benchmark. The…

Recently, the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) completed a study to connect the scale of the North Carolina State End of Grade (EOG) Testing Program used for North Carolina's mathematics and reading assessments with NWEA's Rausch Interval Unit (RIT) scale. Information from the state assessments was used in a study to establish…

The state of Pennsylvania, like many organizations interested in performance improvement, routinely engages in professional development activities. Educators in this hands-on activity engaged in setting meaningful criterion-referenced cut scores for career and technical education assessments using two methods. The main purposes of this study were…

In judgmental standard setting experiments, it may be difficult to specify subjective probabilities that adequately take the properties of the items into account. As a result, these probabilities are not consistent with each other in the sense that they do not refer to the same borderline level of performance. Methods to check standard setting…

By analyzing the Fisher information allotted to the correct response of a Rasch binary item, Huynh (1994) established the response probability criterion 0.67 (RP67) for standard settings based on bookmarks and item mapping. The purpose of this note is to help clarify the conceptual and psychometric framework of the RP criterion.

In the bookmark standard-setting procedure, judges place "bookmarks" in a reordered test booklet containing items presented in order of increasing difficulty. Traditionally, the bookmark difficulty location (BDL) is on the trait continuum where, for dichotomous items, there is a two-thirds probability of a correct response and, for a score of "k"…