Quality assessment is an essential component of preschool education. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing provide benchmarks for evaluating the validity of inferences made from assessment or test results (AERA, APA & NCME, 2014). According to the Standards, test developers should investigate and document information related…

Accountability has become a primary function of large-scale testing in the United States. The pressure on educators to raise scores is vastly greater than it was several decades ago. Research has shown that high-stakes testing can generate behavioral responses that inflate scores, often severely. I argue that because of these responses, using…

Given worldwide prevalence of low-stakes testing for monitoring educational quality and students' progress through school (e.g., Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, Program for International Student Assessment), interpretability of resulting test scores is of global concern. The nonconsequential nature of low-stakes tests…

The article discusses the methodological approach to the technology of the educational experiment performance, the ways of the research data processing by means of research methods and methods of mathematical statistics. The article shows the integrated use of some effective approaches to the training of the students majoring in…

By applying multilevel models with random effects, the authors reviewed and synthesized findings from 30 studies that were published in the last 20 years exploring the relationship between the Educational Testing Service Major Field Test for a Bachelor's Degree in Business (MFTB) and related factors. The results suggest that MFTB scores correlated…

Differential item functioning (DIF) analysis is a key component in the evaluation of the fairness and validity of educational tests. The goal of this project was to review the status of ETS DIF analysis procedures, focusing on three aspects: (a) the nature and stringency of the statistical rules used to flag items, (b) the minimum sample size…

In this research investigation of score comparability for language minority students (English language learners [ELLs] and former English language learners), we examined 3 indicators of score comparability (reliability, internal test structure, and differential item functioning) for 4th and 8th grade students who took the NCLB-mandated content…

The inclusion of young children with disabilities has remained a function of the Head Start program since its inception in the 1960s when the United States Congress mandated that children with disabilities comprise 10% of the Head Start enrollment (Zigler & Styfco, 2000). Standardized, norm-referenced tests used to identify children with…

The purpose of this paper is to help teachers develop a table of specifications for use in classroom testing. The common elements of tables of specifications are presented and explained. Special emphasis is placed on content-process validity. There are 12 tables of specifications in the appendix. The tables serve as examples and are representative…

At a community college in Hawaii, two separate validation processes were carried out in order to install a new student placement test, each serving a different purpose at different times in the installation process. Decision Theory was used to arrive at a decision tool to allow for compromises between accuracy and enrollment management. The…

A structure for describing different approaches to testing is generated by identifying five dimensions along which tests differ: test uses, item generation, item revision, assessment of precision, and validation. These dimensions are used to profile tests of reading comprehension. Only norm-referenced achievement tests had an inference system…

A comparison of double as opposed to single multiple-choice questions yielded significant differences in regard to item difficulty, item discrimination, and internal reliability, but not concurrent validity. (Author/PN)

Results of the pilot study indicated that the matching cloze procedure--which does not require language production skills--may provide the classroom teacher of educable mentally retarded children with an evaluation procedure which is both psychometrically and ontologically valid, as well as being easy to construct. (Author/DLS)

Examines the concurrent validity of four metalinguistic awareness tests (Written Language Awareness Test, Test of Early Reading Ability, Linguistic Awareness in Reading Readiness Test, and the Concepts about Print Test). Finds rather low concurrent validity coefficients which suggests that further work is needed to clarify the operations required…

Reports efforts and results associated with the development and validation of a test of graphing skills for grade seven through twelve science students. Concludes that the Test of Graphing in Science (TOGS) is a valid and reliable instrument. Also discusses TOGS value to the teacher and educational researcher. (ML)