The National Assessment Governing Board has a legislatively mandated responsibility to develop National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) achievement levels. The Board Policy Statement on Developing Student Achievement Levels for the National Assessment of Educational Progress provides policy definitions of "NAEP Basic,"…

One way to fascinate, engage, arouse curiosity, motivate, and stimulate intellectual development in learning scientific concepts is to use counterintuitive questions. These questions make students aware of the inadequacies of their own thinking by exposing them to situations whose outcomes are inconsistent with what they would expect. In this…

The purpose of this study is to develop an achievement test which includes the basic concepts about the subject of sound and its properties in middle school science lessons and which at the same time aims to reveal the alternative concepts that the students already have. During the process of the development of the test, studies in the field and…

The potential of computer-based assessments for capturing complex learning outcomes has been discussed; however, relatively little is understood about how to leverage such potential for summative and accountability purposes. The aim of this study is to develop and validate a multimedia-based assessment of scientific inquiry abilities (MASIA) to…

Evidence from this Spring 2012 pilot suggests feedback about AISD teachers can be reliably obtained from students at all grade levels, and that such feedback can provide a valid supplemental measure of teacher quality to accompany additional indicators.

For educational achievement tests that employ multiple-choice (MC) items and aim to reliably classify students into performance categories, it is critical to design MC items that are capable of discriminating student performance according to the stated achievement levels. This is accomplished, in part, by clearly understanding how item design…

This report summarizes evaluation results on the costs and benefits of administering ACT's EXPLORE assessment in AISD during its pilot year in 2000-2001.