The author asserts that coverage of educational measurement issues in the popular press and in nontechnical education journals rarely reflects the concerns of measurement specialists. He presents the measurement issues surrounding minimum-competency testing and suggests that specialists work to make these known to the public. (SJL)

The author suggests several modifications in the rationale of criterion-referenced measurement in order to increase the utility and meaningfulness of test results for teachers. (AA)

Many consider online courses to be an inferior alternative to traditional face-to-face (f2f) courses because exam cheating is thought to occur more often in online courses. This study examines how the assessment design in online courses contributes to this perception. Following a literature review, the assessment design in a sample of online…

Presented at the Association for Institutional Research (AIR) in Kansas City in June 2007. This presentation explores what has been learned in the effort to maintain the ability to collect demographic information on SAT test takers when registration moved to the web. The information which is collected for research purposes include student's…

Quality assurance in instructional development demands an exhaustive formative evaluation effort and applied testing. Unfortunately, this process is expensive and requires large numbers of user testers with characteristics similar to the intended audience. This article presents a procedure for increasing the efficiency of quality assurance efforts…

Recently, several person-fit statistics have been proposed to detect nonfitting response patterns. This study is designed to generalize an approach followed by Klauer (1995) to an adaptive testing system using the two-parameter logistic model (2PL) as a null model. The approach developed by Klauer is described, and some difficulties in…

Discusses ways testing can help students learn if the teacher can remove the aura and function of evaluation from the experience. (GB)

As a result of this study, the following statement will be included in the 1973-74 ACT Supervisor's Manual of Instructions: Test center supervisors are encouraged to enlist room supervisors and proctors that reflect the racial, ethnic, and sex ratios of the examinees.'' (Author)

Studied the opinions of professional psychologists in Europe about tests and testing with samples of 3,455 Spanish, 2,407 English, 2,079 Dutch, 321 Slovenian, 219 Croatian, and 210 Belgian psychologists. Results show a generally positive attitude about tests and testing, coupled with an awareness that institutions need to adopt a more active role…

Today's psychological measurement depends almost exclusively on the "standardized test." A certain amount of non-standardization, however, exists in the administration of any standardized test, with the amount unknown for any given test score. Time limits on tests pose a bigger problem since another variable is introduced, pressure. Test taking…

A new variant of the standard method for estimating the accuracy of educational tests is examined. It is found that the estimates produced by the new method are essentially unbiased and that the typical sizes of the errors of the estimates approach their theoretical lower limit as size increases, though they are still noticably above it for small…

The purpose of this pictorial practice Test is to prepare pre-primary and beginning first grade children who have not had experience with a group test to do tasks similar to those found on a regular test. The instructions for the practice test stress important cues and directions helpful during test administration, and include the entire dialogue…

This article reviews the history and present status of interactional computerized assessment systems. It concludes that automated assessment is at a rudimentary stage of development especially in school psychology. Further research and development on tests specifically designed for computerization, rather than adapting existing tests to…

This report presents factors to consider in the design of computer-based testing for all students, including students with disabilities and students with limited English proficiency. It also provides a process for the initial transformation of paper/pencil assessments to inclusive computer-based testing. Steps include: (1) assemble a group of…