Reviews 15 years of progress in three psychometric research areas: latent dimensionality structure, test fairness, and skills diagnosis through educational tests. Also discusses an effective model for selecting and carrying out research. Describes a new assessment paradigm that embraces skills level formative assessment. (SLD)

The current state of multidimensional scaling using the city-block metric is reviewed, with attention to (1) substantive and theoretical issues; (2) recent algorithmic developments and their implications for analysis; (3) isometries with other metrics; (4) links to graph-theoretic models; and (5) prospects for future development. (SLD)