The landscape of undergraduate biology education has been shaped by decades of reform efforts calling for instruction to integrate core concepts and scientific skills as a means of helping students become proficient in the discipline. Assessments can be used to make inferences about how these reform efforts have translated into changes in…

The history and evolution of science assessment remains poorly known, especially in the context of the exam question contents. Here we analyze the Finnish matriculation examination in biology from the 1920s to 1960s to understand how the exam has evolved in both its knowledge content and educational form. Each question was classified according to…

Writing multiple-choice test items to measure student learning in higher education is a challenge. Based on extensive scholarly research and experience, the author describes various item formats, offers guidelines for creating these items, and provides many examples of both good and bad test items. He also suggests some shortcuts for developing…

The success of all students, including students with disabilities, on statewide assessments in mathematics and reading/English language arts has been examined closely. This is due, in part, to the role of these content areas in school accountability for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) known as "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB).…

The purpose of this document is to provide background information that will be useful in interpreting the 2007 results from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) by comparing its design, features, framework, and items with those of the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress and another international assessment…

Studied content domain, format, and level of inquiry as factors contributing to the large variation in student performance across open-ended measures. Results for more than 1,200 eighth graders do not support the hypothesis that tasks similar in content, format, and level of inquiry would correlate higher with each other than with measures…

The study described in this paper is part of an effort to improve understanding of the science assessment of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). It involved the coding of all the items in the 1996 NAEP science assessments, which included 45 blocks (15 each for grades 4, 8, and 12) and over 500 items. Each of the approximately…

This study investigated three factors that may contribute to the large variation in student performance across open-ended measures. These factors are content domain, format (whether the task required only pencil and paper or involved a hands-on manipulation of equipment), and level of inquiry (whether the task guided the student toward the…

This study explores methods for detecting gender-based differential item functioning (DIF) on the 12th grade multiple-choice and constructed-response science tests administered as part of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88). Several combinations of conditioning variables were explored for DIF detection on both tests, and…

In the spring of 1989, over 2,000 pairs of fourth- and eighth-grade students were assessed on their ability to apply mathematical and scientific concepts. The tests (administered in alternate years during the written assessments of the Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program) required students to apply what they knew about mathematics and…