This study describes the role that Rasch measurement played in the development of assessments aligned to the "Next Generation Science Standards," tasks that require students to use the three dimensions of science practices, disciplinary core ideas and cross-cutting concepts to make sense of energy-related phenomena. A set of 27 three-dimensional, multi-item tasks were developed and field tested along with a set of multiple-choice test items focused on disciplinary core ideas. Data were collected from elementary, middle, and high school students from across the U.S. Rasch modeling was used to investigate the fit of the data to the model, the dimensionality of the data, differential functioning of the tasks, the relative difficulties of the tasks, and the performance of students by grade band.