The choice of anchor tests is crucial in applications of the nonequivalent groups with anchor test design of equating. Sinharay and Holland (2006, 2007) suggested "miditests," which are anchor tests that are content-representative and have the same mean item difficulty as the total test but have a smaller spread of item difficulties.…

This commentary provides an external perspective on NASP's first public report on racial and ethnic differences in Praxis outcomes. These data demonstrate racial disparities in pass rates but do not provide information regarding the causes of these disparities. This report underscores the need for expanded public reporting of Praxis data in order…

Seeking evidence to support content validity is essential to test validation. This is especially the case in contexts where test scores are interpreted in relation to external proficiency standards and where new test content is constantly being produced to meet test administration and security demands. In this paper, we describe a modified…

In 2018, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) administered two assessments--the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Technology and Engineering Literacy (TEL) assessment and the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS)--to two separate nationally representative samples of 8th-grade students in the…

The Civil War was concluded over 150 years ago but recently, monuments erected to commemorate the Civil War and its participants have been the site of civil unrest (e.g., Charlottesville, VA in 2018) and calls for removal of such monuments. The Confederate monuments debate has been going strong for decades, and it seems to have been picking up…

Distractors in tests are included to divert attention away from correct answers choices. Knowing what types of distractors commonly appear in tests will benefit test takers as they can prepare themselves beforehand. Therefore, this qualitative study was aimed at making assumptions on plausible lexical distractors which are expected to appear in…

Normative notions that classical Chinese texts support authoritarian practices eclipse the possibility that the texts can become contemporary educational resources. Oriented by a conception of relationality, the research engages a Foucauldian approach to writing history as genealogy to argue that the political use of the so-called Confucian texts…

Measurement instruments of early childhood teachers' mathematical pedagogical content knowledge (MPCK) have to consider the special characteristics of early childhood teaching. Early childhood teaching includes some planned activities but in contrast to learning in school, it is often motivated and generated by situations which unfold…

This article outlines the development and validation of the Computer-Delivered Test (CDT) Acceptance Questionnaire (CTAQ). The CTAQ was designed to be a practical measure of CDT acceptance of Singapore secondary and high school students (Grades 7-12) toward taking tests within an e-assessment system. The stages of test (questionnaire item)…

The National Assessment Governing Board (Governing Board) is an independent, bipartisan organization that sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as The Nation's Report Card. This paper provides a summary of the history of the Governing Board framework development processes and the evolution of the…

In this article, the authors tackle the tension between a fact-based civics test and inquiry-based teaching and learning. The authors begin with a short history on the civics test and the new standards in Kentucky before turning their attention to one approach to the civics test using an Inquiry Design Model (IDM) inquiry--"Does the civics…

In this paper, we present a study, which models and measures the competencies of higher education students in business and economics--within and across countries. To measure student competencies in a valid and reliable way, the Test of Understanding in College Economics was used, which assesses microeconomic and macroeconomic competencies. The…

Cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs) have received much interest within the field of language testing over the last decade due to their great potential to provide diagnostic feedback to all stakeholders and ultimately improve language teaching and learning. A large number of studies have demonstrated the application of CDMs on advanced large-scale…

The nonequivalent groups with anchor test (NEAT) design is frequently used in test score equating or linking. One important assumption of the NEAT design is that the anchor test is a miniversion of the 2 tests to be equated/linked. When the content of the 2 tests is different, it is not possible for the anchor test to be adequately representative…

The TOEFL iBT test was introduced in 2005 to better reflect the language demands of real-life academic tasks than did previous versions of the test. The task-based design of the test was intended to support the interpretation of its scores as a trustworthy measure of international students' ability to use English in an academic environment. Until…