School accountability decisions based on standardized tests hinge on the degree of alignment of the test with a state's standards. Yet no established criteria were available for judging strength of alignment. Previous studies of alignment among tests, standards, and teachers' instruction have yielded mixed results that are difficult to interpret…

Value-added models help to evaluate the knowledge that school districts, schools, and teachers add to student learning as students progress through school. In this article, the well-known Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS) is examined. The author presents a practical investigation of the methodological issues associated with the…

This study is an attempt to answer the following research question: can the reliability of a criterion-referenced test be accurately determined according to a multiple classification of the student's performance? Specifically, the study pursues the beta-multinomial model, which postulates the probability distribution of an examinee's degree of…

A description of the difficulties encountered in constructing a criterion-referenced test to assess end-of-year skills as part of a program evaluation is presented. The problems encountered in preparing the customized test are described in humorous detail. The first problem involved the listening test obtained from a publisher without…

Designed to provide a criterion referenced measurement of CVC (consonant vowel consonant) word patterns, this test consists of six subtests of 152 items prepared as slides for projection. Items are to be presented to the subjects on two separate occasions. (This document is one of those reviewed in The Research Instruments Project (TRIP) monograph…

Rescoring of Center for Occupational and Professional Assessment objective-referenced tests is decided largely by content experts selected by client organizations. A few of the test items, statistically flagged for review, are not rescored. Some of this incongruence could be due to the use of the biserial correlation (r-biserial) as an…

Designed to measure children's abilities to synthesize concepts from several sources, this measure is based on the assumptions that children move from the concrete to the abstract, from specific to generic, and that the ability to synthesize and form new concepts is an important prerequisite to reading comprehension. Each form of the test is…

The purpose of this study was to examine the homogeneity in difficulty of item domains and the effectiveness of Rasch pre-equating procedures for adjusting test scores for differences in the difficulty of tests constructed by sampling from item domains. The data used were taken from a field test and calibration of 810 tenth-grade items in…

A research-derived integrated system of curriculum development and instructional delivery called NEBEAT (Needs Based Education and Training) is described in relation to more traditional-behaviorally-based systems models. Four major components of curriculum design are examined as features which differentiate NEBEAT from its antecedents. (Author/MBR)

Designed to assess the reading and writing skills of preservice and inservice teachers, this criterion referenced test assesses four skills areas following the reading of a selected professional article. The skill areas assessed are the ability to (1) understand the professional vocabulary used in the selection, (2) answer literal level…

Item analysis procedures appropriate for domain-referenced classroom testing are described. A conceptual framework within which item statistics can be considered and promising statistics in light of this framework are presented. The sampling fluctuations of the more promising item statistics for sample sizes comparable to the typical classroom…

Although effective and efficient assessment procedures are crucial to the success of organizational training programs, the tests used for both student and program evaluation are often developed by instructional designers (IDS) and subject matter experts (SMEs) with little formal training in test development. This paper summarizes the major…

Approaches proposed for educational diagnostic assessment are reviewed and identified as deficit assessment and error analysis. The development of diagnostic instruments may require a reexamination of existing psychometric models and development of alternative ones. The psychometric and content demands of diagnostic assessment all but require test…

A battery of physical ability tests was validated using a predictive, criterion-related strategy. The battery was given to 1,003 female soldiers and 980 male soldiers before they had begun Army Basic Training. Criterion measures which represented physical competency in Basic Training (physical proficiency tests, sick call, profiles, and separation…

Concern for enhancing construct validity of vocational interest measures provides a focus for scale construction quite distinct from that derived from a criterion-referenced strategy: Construct-oriented measurement implies: (1) substantive definitions of dimensions; (2) concern for internal consistency reliability, as well as generalizability; (3)…