This book explores the links between assessment and instruction and provides a jargon-free look at classroom and large-scale test construction, interpretation, and application. The book offers a "crash course" in instructionally focused assessment with practical advice for dealing with testing targets and standards-based achievement tests. The…

Papers in this collection were commissioned for a workshop designed to share advances in the cognitive sciences and methods of measurement and their implications for improving educational assessment. A second goal of the workshop was to delve into the role that technology could play in bringing these advances together. The papers are: (1)…

For a growing number of test translations, there is a need for equating that provides scores that can be used interchangeably for both source- and target-language forms, but basic equating requirements cannot usually be met in the cross-lingual case. The situation is more problematic in verbal tests, where translation has more impact on item…

Three groups of persons are involved in the testing enterprise: test producers, test users, and test takers. A wide literature is available to guide the first two groups, but only recently have measurement professionals considered the interests of test takers in any careful way. The content of this chapter is presented as a set of 26…

New items are being calibrated for the next generation of the computerized adaptive (CAT) version of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) (Forms 5 and 6). The requirements that the items be "good" three-parameter logistic (3-PL) model items and typically "like" items in the previous CAT-ASVAB tests have…

Item selection methods in computerized adaptive testing (CAT) can yield extremely skewed item exposure distribution in which items with high "a" values may be over-exposed while those with low "a" values may never be selected. H. Chang and Z. Ying (1999) proposed the a-stratified design (ASTR) that attempts to equalize item…

Outside of large-scale testing programs, the computerized adaptive test (CAT) has thus far had only limited impact on measurement practice. In smaller-scale testing contexts, limited data are often available, which precludes the establishment of calibrated item pools for use by traditional (i.e., item response theory (IRT) based) CATs. This paper…

Researchers spend much time and effort developing measures, including measures of students? conceptual knowledge. In an effort to make such assessments easier to design, the Principled Assessment Designs for Inquiry (PADI) project has developed a framework for designing tasks and to illustrate that its use has ?reverse engineered? several …

This document includes the results of Maine's 2003-2004 study examining actions taken by 18 school districts in response to the challenges of developing a Local Assessment System (LAS) using the principles and criteria set forth in the "LAS Guide" distributed to school districts in June, 2003. The report is organized into three parts:…

What are the purposes of exams? Would teachers give exams if they were not grading students? Exams provide information that should inform the instructional program, let the students know their strengths as well as areas for growth, and tell teachers what information their students know and what they still need to know. When determining how…

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

Discusses passage content and style, accessibility of the passages, their completeness, the extent to which the items are passage-dependent, and the extent to which additional knowledge is required to answer the questions on reading comprehension tests and exercises. (TO)

This computer program is designed to minimize labor on the part of the instructor, both in preparation and in correction of examinations, and at the same time to permit constructing examinations so that breaches of security are rendered difficult. (Author)

Observes the changing Latin curriculum in England for those preparing to take "O"-Level examinations and concludes that "understanding" is replacing "knowledge" as the primary educational objective. (RL)