This manual contains information about the American College Test (ACT) Plan® program. The principal focus of this manual is to document the Plan program's technical adequacy in light of its intended purposes. This manual supersedes the 2011 edition. The content of this manual responds to requirements of the testing industry as established in the…

Purpose: The purpose of this replication study was to determine the degree to which teachers and administrators in selected low-achieving Title I elementary schools: 1. Report that they teach the following test-taking skills to prepare their students to take the CST: establishing an appropriate student attitude toward testing, familiarity with the…

The "2009 GED[R] Testing Program Statistical Report" is the 52nd annual report in the program's 68-year history of providing a second opportunity for adults without a high school credential to earn their jurisdiction's GED credential. The report provides candidate demographic and GED Test performance statistics as well as historical…

There is much debate on the merits and pitfalls of standardized tests for college admission, with questions regarding the format (multiple-choice versus constructed response), cognitive complexity, and content of these assessments (achievement versus aptitude) at the forefront of the discussion. This study addressed these questions by…

In this study, cross-cultural differences in cognitive test scores are hypothesized to depend on a test's cultural complexity (Cultural Complexity Hypothesis: CCH), here conceptualized as its content familiarity, rather than on its cognitive complexity (Spearman's Hypothesis: SH). The content familiarity of tests assessing short-term memory,…

In operational testing programs using item response theory (IRT), item parameter invariance is threatened when an item appears in a different location on the live test than it did when it was field tested. This study utilizes data from a large state's assessments to model change in Rasch item difficulty (RID) as a function of item position change,…

Although millions of dollars and weeks of instructional time are spent nationally on testing students, educators often have little information on how to choose appropriate assessments of adolescent reading for informing instruction. This guide is designed to meet that need, by drawing together evidence about nine of the most commonly-used,…

As the ongoing national indicator of what American students know and can do, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Reading regularly collects achievement information on representative samples of students in grades 4, 8, and 12. Through The Nation's Report Card, the NAEP Reading Assessment reports how well students perform in…

This paper reports on an analysis of large-scale assessments of Grades 5-8 students' writing across 10 provinces and 2 territories in Canada. Theory, classroom practice, and the contributions and constraints of large-scale writing assessment are brought together with a focus on Grades 5-8 writing in order to provide both a broad view of…

Current science assessments typically present a series of isolated fact-based questions, poorly representing the complexity of how real-world science is constructed. The National Research Council asserts that this needs to change to reflect a more authentic model of science practice. We strongly concur and suggest that good science assessments…

This article considers two methods of estimating standard errors of equipercentile equating: the parametric bootstrap method and the nonparametric bootstrap method. Using a simulation study, these two methods are compared under three sample sizes (300, 1,000, and 3,000), for two test content areas (the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills Maps and Diagrams…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for the arts measures students' knowledge and skills in creating, performing, and responding to works of music, theatre, and visual arts. This framework document asserts that dance, music, theatre and the visual arts are important parts of a full education. When students engage in the arts,…

A significant event for the advancement of economic education in the schools is the development of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in economics. For the first time, national data from a representative sample of students are available to measure the achievement of high school students in economics. The achievement results are…

Although the United States has had a language requirement for citizenship (through the naturalization process) since the first decade of the 20th century, very little research and discussion has taken place in academic circles about this requirement, which has been enforced for the past two decades through a test and testing practice to which…

This article describes and analyses the development of a new test of aviation English by the Finnish Civil Aviation Authority (FCAA), as well as the overall situation in Finland as regards the testing of aviation English. The article describes the FCAA development project and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the new test and the whole…