Student responses to the West Virginia Educational Standards Test (WESTEST) 2 Online Writing Assessment are scored by a computer-scoring engine. The scoring method is not widely understood among educators, and there exists a misperception that it is not comparable to hand scoring. To address these issues, the West Virginia Department of Education…

The use of accommodations for both instruction and assessment continues to be of great importance for students with disabilities. The purpose of this report is to provide an update on the state of the research on testing accommodations, as well as to identify promising areas of research likely to contribute to understanding of current and emerging…

The purpose of the study was to compare reliability estimates for a test composed of stimulus-dependent testlets as derived from item scores, testlet scores, and under the univariate generalizability theory and multivariate generalizability theory designs, as well as to determine the influence of the number of testlets and the number of items per…

Not infrequently, investigators assume that reliability for groups is greater than reliability for persons, or that the error variance for groups is less than that for persons. Using generalizability theory, it is shown that this "conventional wisdom" is not necessarily true. Examples are provided from the course-evaluation and the…

Although computer-based testing is becoming popular, many of these tests are limited to the use of selected-response item formats due to the difficulty in mechanically scoring constructed-response items. This limitation is unfortunate because many constructs, such as writing proficiency, can be measured more directly using items that require…

During round 16 of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), 900 NLSY sample members were randomly assigned to be interviewed about the period since their round 14 interview. Their responses were compared to those of approximately 8,000 NLSY sample members who were assigned to be interviewed about the 1-year period since their round 15…

This is the fourth in a series of reports evaluating the Public Library Statistics (PLS) program, an annual census of public libraries in the United States. The census includes, in addition to a full count of public libraries and their outlets, a variety of statistics about the services provided by and, the financial condition and the staffing…

At Golden College (California), student writing samples are holistically scored by pairs of judges on a six-point scale. Judges are allowed to use plus and minus figures, thus converting the integer scale to a decimal scale of evaluation. In 1991, 499 writing samples written as part of the placement testing process for students in the Coast…

The National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) is the third major study in the National Center for Education Statistics program of longitudinal studies about the achievement and characteristics of elementary and secondary school students. NELS:88 began with a base year survey of eighth grade students in 1988, followed up at 2-year…

Purpose: A pilot study of the "Language, Literacy, & Vocabulary!" program was conducted by Learning Gauger, Inc., for National Geographic School Publishing, in spring 2006. The program evaluation examined the classroom adoption approaches used by participating teachers and the subsequent impact of the "Language, Literacy, &…

In 1991, a student learning outcomes assessment was conducted at Wenatchee Valley College, Washington. All English 101 students in the winter and spring quarters of 1990 wrote a 2-hour final exam. Winter quarter students wrote on the same topic while spring quarter students wrote on one of three randomly assigned topics. Five English 101…

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is the most ambitious study conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement to date. TIMSS developed and administered tests and questionnaires in three student populations to study achievement in participating countries and the factors associated…

This volume contains tables of item analysis results obtained by following procedures associated with the Rasch Model for those reading tests used in the Anchor Test Study. Appendix I gives the test names and their corresponding analysis code numbers. Section I (Basic Item Analyses) presents data for the item analysis of each test in a two part…

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) developed and administered tests and questionnaires in three student populations to document the quality of mathematics and science education in 45 participating countries. Study design, instrument development, and research procedures were achieved through a complex collaborative…

Based on data from the High School and Beyond Study, a longitudinal study of high school sophomores and seniors, this report summarizes some of the study's findings on the differences between Hispanics and non-Hispanic blacks and whites in school delay, aspirations, test scores, language usage, and socioeconomic status. Tabular data indicate that:…