New Meridian Corporation has developed the "Quality Testing Standards and Criteria for Comparability Claims" (QTS). The goal of the QTS is to provide guidance to states that are interested in including content from the New Meridian item bank and intend to make comparability claims with "other assessments" that include New…

New Meridian Corporation has developed the "Quality Testing Standards and Criteria for Comparability Claims" (QTS). The goal of the QTS is to provide guidance to states that are interested in including content from the New Meridian item bank and intend to make comparability claims with "other assessments" that include New…

New Meridian Corporation has developed the "Quality Testing Standards and Criteria for Comparability Claims" (QTS) to provide guidance to states that are interested in including New Meridian content and would like to either keep reporting scores on the New Meridian Scale or use the New Meridian performance levels; that is, the state…

The 2018 Nebraska Student-Centered Assessment System (NSCAS) Summative technical report documents the processes and procedures implemented to support the Spring 2018 NSCAS Summative English Language Arts (ELA), Mathematics, and Science assessments by NWEA under the supervision of the Nebraska Department of Education (NDE). The technical report…

The dominant profile judgment method, designed for use with profiles of polytomous scores on exercises in a performance-based assessment, is presented as a standard-setting method. The approach guides standard-setting panelists in articulating their standard-setting policies and allows for complex policy statements. (SLD)

Elements of arbitrariness in the standard setting process are explored, and an alternative to the use of cut scores is presented. The first part of the paper analyzes the use of cut scores in large-scale assessments, discussing three different functions: (1) cut scores define the qualifications used in assessments; (2) they simplify the reporting…

In 1991 the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) released a report interpreting the achievement of U.S. students in mathematics on the 1990 National Assessment of Educational Progress in terms of a set of performance standards. The NAGB had been designing and implementing an approach to defining basic, proficient, and advanced levels of…

Setting performance standards on constructed-response assessments involving polytomously scored exercises presents a challenge for measurement practitioners. Some standard setting methods designed for use with multiple-choice, dichotomously scored assessments entail aggregating item performance estimates across a panel of experts. For these items,…

Assigning letter grades in a consistent manner to tests in large classes across semesters is problematic if absolute grading standards are used. It may be unreasonable to implement the usual standard-setting approaches recommended for large-scale criterion-referenced testing due to both time constraints and a desire to have criteria that appear…

Applied the analytical judgment standard setting method to 90 papers from the 1996 Grade 8 National Assessment of Educational Progress science assessment. Compared sorting versus direct classification, long and short versions of the classification scale, and effects of discussion on cutscores. Results from 17 Georgia teachers and 8 Michigan…

The number of performance-based assessments is increasing rapidly, but to date there is no established procedure for setting standards on these assessments. This paper describes several extensions to the Angoff procedure to accommodate the characteristics of a performance-based assessment and presents the results of research in applying this…

This National Council on Measurement in Education module describes standard setting for achievement measures used in education, licensure, and certification. The purposes, design, and conduct of standard-setting procedures are reviewed, and ways to calculate a cutting score are demonstrated. A self-test and annotated bibliography are included.…

The "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" (1985) and the "Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures" (1978) provide no clear guidance on choosing methods for setting standards on teacher certification tests, although they require that practices be well-documented and produce reasonable results, and…

A new standard setting approach is introduced, called the cognitive components approach. Like the Angoff method, the cognitive components method generates minimum pass levels (MPLs) for each item. In both approaches, the item MPLs are summed for each judge, then averaged across judges to yield the standard. In the cognitive components approach,…

Ten factors relevant to the standard-setting decision on important tests (i.e., high school diploma tests) are proposed as a basis for a standard-setting preparation program. It is suggested that, typically, those who set standards have had little or no experience and would benefit from formal preparation. (SLD)