There is growing concern that the remedial math courses taken by most community college students unnecessarily divert some students from earning a degree. Anecdotes of students who thought they had completed their math requirements in high school only to have remedial courses delay their progress through college are common. In addition, research…

Rhode Island is committed to ensuring that all educators receive fair, accurate, and meaningful educator evaluations that provide information that can help all teachers improve and refine their practice. This commitment is an outgrowth of the state's recognition of the influence teachers have on student growth and achievement. Currently, districts…

Validity evidence based on test content is important for educational tests to demonstrate the degree to which they fulfill their purposes. Most content validity studies involve subject matter experts (SMEs) who rate items that comprise a test form. In computerized-adaptive testing, examinees take different sets of items and test "forms"…

This article considers the design process for new formative history assessments. Over the course of 3 years, my colleagues from the Stanford History Education Group and I designed, piloted, and revised dozens of "History Assessments of Thinking" (HATs). As we created HATs, we sought to gather information about their cognitive validity,…

This study presents the results of the analysis of a group of teacher-made test questions for statistics courses at the university level. Teachers were asked to submit tests they had used in their previous two semesters. Ninety-seven tests containing 978 questions were gathered and classified according to the SOLO taxonomy (Biggs & Collis,…

In automated test assembly (ATA), the methodology of mixed-integer programming is used to select test items from an item bank to meet the specifications for a desired test form and optimize its measurement accuracy. The same methodology can be used to automate the formatting of the set of selected items into the actual test form. Three different…

The purpose of this Guidebook is to describe the process and basic requirements for the student learning measures that are used as part of the teacher evaluation and support process. For aspects of the process that have room for flexibility and school/district-level discretion, the different options have been clearly separated and labeled with a…

The purpose of this qualitative research study is to analyze instructors' exam questions at a Primary Education Department in terms of the exam's period, the comprehensibility of the instructions, cognitive level, and the appropriateness to the critical thinking. This qualitative study is based on document analysis method. 100 randomly selected…

Researchers (Sandarg & Schomber, 2009; Wilkerson, Schomber, & Sandarg, 2004) have urged the profession to develop a new subject-matter licensure test to reflect the best practices in the foreign language classroom. In October 2010, the Praxis II: World Language Test joined the Praxis Series. Given that this standards-driven test differs…

Measurement and evaluation of students' achievement are an important aspect to make sure that students really understand the course content and monitor students' achievement level. Performance is not only reflected from the numbers of high achievers of the students, but also on quality of the grade obtained; does the grade "A" truly…

We describe an innovative automated test construction algorithm for building aligned achievement tests. By incorporating the algorithm into the test construction process, along with other test construction procedures for building reliable and unbiased assessments, the result is much more valid tests than result from current test construction…

Coherence is the core principle underlying standards-based educational reforms. Assessments aligned with content standards are designed to guide instruction and raise achievement. The authors investigate the coherence of standards-based reform's key instruments using the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum. Analyzing 138 standards-assessment pairs…

In this article, the author describes his project to take every standardized exam English majors students take. During the summer and fall semesters of 2012, the author signed up for and took the GRE General Test, the Praxis Content Area Exam (English Language, Literature, and Composition: Content Knowledge), the Senior Major Field Tests in…

As teachers begin shaping lessons for the common standards, many are wondering how to prepare their students for tests that won't be ready for at least two years. Sample items being drafted for those exams offer early ideas of what lies ahead. Two large groups of states are using federal Race to the Top money to create new suites of exams for the…

School districts and states across the Regional Educational Laboratory Mid-Atlantic Region and the country as a whole have been modifying their teacher evaluation systems to identify more effective and less effective teachers and provide better feedback to improve instructional practice. The new systems typically include components related to…