This article proposes that sampling design effects have potentially huge unrecognized impacts on the results reported by large-scale district and state assessments in the United States. When design effects are unrecognized and unaccounted for they lead to underestimating the sampling error in item and test statistics. Underestimating the sampling…

In large-scale assessments, such as state-wide testing programs, national sample-based assessments, and international comparative studies, there are many steps involved in the measurement and reporting of student achievement. There are always sources of inaccuracies in each of the steps. It is of interest to identify the source and magnitude of…

Guidelines are described for setting up an item bank under latent trait theory which may be applied to the achievement testing system of multi-section, large-enrollment, college survey courses. The enrollment for the course is typically heterogeneous: students may be majors or non-majors, any one section may contain honors college students and…