In educational and psychological research, we are often interested in discrete latent states of individuals responding to an assessment (e.g., proficiency or non-proficiency on educational standards, the presence or absence of a psychological disorder). Diagnostic classification models (DCMs; also called cognitive diagnostic models [CDMs]) are a…

A course with good learning outcomes is one in which most of the enrolled students achieve the mastery specified in the predefined learning objectives. Since the enrolment is invariably a mix of students with heterogeneous capabilities, the class average grade is a poor indicator of how the class is divided into at least two groups, of high- and…

Statistical competence is defined as the leader's feature of character, which characterizes his willingness and ability to organize, to process and interpret information, needed to implement management processes. Statistical competence should be considered as a substructure of functional competence of the leader as it is shown in the article. The…

Low motivation to perform well on a test is a potentially problematic source of construct-irrelevant variance (Messick, 1980), especially when there are low or no stakes attached to performance. That is, interpretations of test scores as indicators of students' knowledge and skills may be compromised if those students do not put forth the effort…

The development of spatial navigation in children depends not only on remembering which landmarks lead to a goal location but also on developing strategies to deal with changes in the environment or imperfections in memory. Using cue combination methods, the authors examined 3- and 4-year-old children's memory for different types of spatial cues…

Researchers are strongly encouraged to accompany the results of statistical tests with appropriate estimates of effect size. For 2-group comparisons, a probability-based effect size estimator ("A") has many appealing properties (e.g., it is easy to understand, robust to violations of parametric assumptions, insensitive to outliers). We review…

States and school districts are searching for strategies to raise the college and career readiness of high school graduates--imperative in an era when postsecondary credentials are the key to good jobs, better pay, and stronger economies. The creation and implementation of higher graduation standards aligned to college and career expectations is…

Purpose: Significant threshold differences on retest for pure-tone audiometry are often evaluated by application of ad hoc rules, such as a shift in a pure-tone average or in 2 adjacent frequencies that exceeds a predefined amount. Rules that are so derived do not consider the probability of observing a particular audiogram. Methods: A general…

The effect of large, within-examinee item difficulty variability on estimates of the proportion of consistent classification of examinees into mastery categories was studied over 2 test administrations for 100 simulated examinees. The proportion of consistent classifications was adequately estimated using the technique proposed by M. Subkoviak…

This study investigated the impact of task directions on the mathematical performance of high school students from six classes. Students analyzed data regarding school dropout by answering six short-answer questions and writing a letter discussing the trends and their predictions about school dropout. Tasks were scored using two methods: (1) trait…

Results of the second mathematics assessment of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are analyzed with regard to the performance of 13- and 17-year-olds on probability exercises. The results suggest that this area has been neglected in mathematics instruction. (MP)

An important feature of recent large-scale performance assessments has been the reporting of pupil and school performance in terms of performance or proficiency categories. When an assessment uses such ordered categories as the primary means of reporting results, the natural way of reporting on the quality of the assessment is through the…

A Markov model for predicting performance on criterion-referenced tests is presented,. The model is expressed mathematically as a function of transition matrix, a current state vector, and a future state vector. The matrix is defined in terms of conditional probabilities, i.e., the probability of making a transition to a specific future…

The Mastery-Learning test model is extended. Methods for estimating prior probabilities are described. The use of an adjustment matrix to transform a probability of mastery measure and empirical methods for estimating adjustment matrix parameters are derived. Adjustment matrices are interpreted as indicators of instructional effectiveness and as…

This study introduces procedures for constructing a proficiency scale for a large-scale test by applying Tatsuoka's Rule Space Model. The SAT Mathematics (SAT M) Section 2 is used for illustrating the process and the results. A task analysis is summarized in a mapping sentence, and then 14 processes and content attributes are identified for…