Item positions in educational assessments are often randomized across students to prevent cheating. However, if altering item positions results in any significant impact on students' performance, it may threaten the validity of test scores. Two widely used approaches for detecting position effects -- logistic regression and hierarchical…

In higher education, the principle of constructive alignment for devising teaching, learning activities and assessment tasks is the underpinning concept in curriculum design and development to achieve intended learning outcomes. Student's deep learning is critical and it is the responsibility of the curriculum developer to make sure that synergy…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what the nation's students know and can do in various subjects such as mathematics, reading, science, and writing, as well as civics, geography, technology and engineering literacy, and U.S. history. The results of NAEP are…

Among the various agencies and activities within the Department of Defense, Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) has the unique charge of providing an education for military connected students that is commensurate with U.S. public school systems. It is essential that DoDEA honors that position of trust by providing updates to all of…

Although substantial research has examined how teachers respond to students' linguistic errors, the motivational influence of feedback practices in foreign language education has received relatively little attention. Drawing on recent feedback theories of educational assessment (e.g., Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Carless, 2017) and second…

When states issued the first coronavirus stay-at-home order last March, few could have foreseen how the foundations of learning and teaching would be shaken. As hopes for a brief disruption confronted reality, state and district leaders began plans to extend some form of distance learning into the 2020-21 school year. They also began to think…

The chapters in this online volume comprise the TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center's technical report of the methods and procedures used to develop, implement, and report the results of TIMSS 2019. There were various technical challenges because TIMSS 2019 was the initial phase of the transition to eTIMSS, with approximately half the…

This memo, which is the sixth in the series, highlights the ongoing work of the Sunnyside Unified School District (SUSD) to create an ecology of equity. Their efforts focus on developing a school system that fosters a belief in each person's capacity to learn (administrators, teachers, and students alike) and increases students' opportunities for…

Assessment and evaluation have always been an integral part of educational process. Quality and purposeful assessment can assist in students' learning and their achievement. While there has been a rapid growth in international, standardized student assessments in the past few decades, a large number of education systems participating in these…

The authors describe five value-added methods (VAM) used in school assessment as the backdrop to their main thesis. Then they review the assumptions underlying measurement and evaluation, the foundation of all assessment systems, including value-added. They discuss the traditional criterion variable used in VAM: a standardized test score. Next,…

This chapter describes a study that compares two approaches (self-reported effort [SRE] and response time effort [RTE]) for identifying low-effort examinees in student learning outcomes assessment. Although both approaches equally discriminated from measures of ability (e.g., SAT scores), RTE was found to have a stronger relationship with test…

A growing number of Canadian universities offer graduate student certificate programs in university teaching. This paper examines such programs at 13 Canadian universities and presents a discussion of program structures and practices. The findings suggest that most programs were offered over one to two years, and upon successful completion,…

María Oliveri, and Saad Khan write that the article: "How Task Features Impact Evidence from Assessments Embedded in Simulations and Games" provided helpful illustrations regarding the implementation of evidence-centered assessment design (Mislevy & Haertel, 2006; Mislevy, Steinberg, & Almond, 1999) with games and simulations.…

In "How Task Features Impact Evidence from Assessments Embedded in Simulations and Games," Almond, Kim, Velasquez, and Shute have prepared a thought-provoking piece contrasting the roles of task model variables in a traditional assessment of mathematics word problems to their roles in "Newton's Playground," a game designed…

The new data sciences of education bring substantial legal, political, and ethical questions about the management of information about learners. This piece provides a synoptic view of recent scholarly discussion in this domain and calls for a proactive approach to the ethics of learning research.