The current article evaluates a national English language proficiency test known as the "MSRT test" which is used to determine the eligibility of candidates for admission to and completion of higher education programs in Iran. Students in all majors take this standardized, high-stake criterion-referenced test to determine if they have…

This article examines the 2015 Atlanta cheating scandal trials and sentencing. Using critical race theory, the authors argue that cheating is a natural outgrowth of market-based school reform and that racial realism will always lead to scrutiny of Black performance. The sentences of these Black educators is overkill, rooted in anti-Blackness, and…

Language testers operate within two frames of reference: norm-referenced (NRT) and criterion-referenced testing (CRT). The former underpins the world of large-scale standardized testing that prioritizes variability and comparison. The latter supports substantive score meaning in formative and domain specific assessment. Some claim that the…

The teacher's task of assigning letter grades to students and the public's interpretation of them can be perplexing. Does the student's grade represent the level of achievement, the gain in achievement, or some combination of the two? Is the student's effort included in the grade, or are high achievers given good marks regardless of effort? Are…

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…

With the passage of 2005 Wisconsin Act 125, private schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) are now required to administer a nationally normed standardized test annually in reading, mathematics, and science to their MPCP (a.k.a. "Choice") students enrolled in the 4th, 8th, and 10th grades. The law further…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of teaching eight secondary students with disabilities, including seven with learning disabilities, a strategy for answering a variety of inferential questions. A multiple-baseline across-subjects design was employed. Outcome measures included scores on researcher-devised comprehension…

The purpose of this report is to provide descriptive data regarding the test scores of Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) students in grades 4, 8 and 10 in reading, math, and science, as reported to the School Choice Demonstration Project 2008-2009. The tables, graphs, and histograms presented in this paper provide a snapshot of these…

On April 5, 2002, the Montana Office of Public Instruction (OPI) entered into a compliance agreement with the U.S. Department of Education to bring the state into compliance with the provisions of the following federal laws: Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1994, P.L. 103-382 and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)…

Language assessment is reviewed as a technology which could become more effective for classroom use through school-based development and greater use of alternatives to standardized testing. (Author)

For 50 years, large-scale educational achievement testing in the United States was dominated by a (low-cost) multiple-choice assessment strategy. The problem is finding adequate financial resources to support constructed-response methods used in authentic or performance testing. Matrix sampling, featuring low-proportion sampling of both students…

Notes problems in using reading tests intended for children when testing adults; attempts to clarify some of these problems by making explicit the assumptions implicit in the practice of using children's reading tests with adults. (GT)

The purpose of this report is to provide descriptive data regarding the test scores of Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) students in grades 4, 8 and 10 in reading, math and science, as reported to the School Choice Demonstration Project 2007-2008. The tables, graphs, and histograms presented in this report provide a snapshot of these…

Examines the extent and nature of America's need to know whether the nation's educational outlook is improving, considers the contributions of the Scholastic Aptitude Test and the National Assessment of Educational Progress to the information effort, and proposes a more effective testing system to be administered by the Census Bureau. (PGD)

Test specifications need to take a middle road so that they are not so general that instructional targeting is impossible and not so specific that only unitary assessment targets are fostered. Using illustrative sample items provides a good means of communicating the items eligible to be tested. (SLD)