

Of particular debate is the impact of transferring from a traditional public school to a charter school on student achievement and growth. We employ propensity score stratification and multilevel models to balance key covariates between treatment and control groups of a cross-state sample of students, which provides a more complex picture of charter school achievement effects in a quasi-experimental context.
By: Beth Tarasawa, Yun Xiang
Topics: Measurement & scaling, Student growth & accountability policies


Effort analysis: Individual score validation of achievement test data
Whenever the purpose of measurement is to inform an inference about a student’s achievement level, it is important that we be able to trust that the student’s test score accurately reflects what that student knows and can do. Such trust requires the assumption that a student’s test event is not unduly influenced by construct-irrelevant factors that could distort his score. This article examines one such factor—test-taking motivation—that tends to induce a person-specific, systematic negative bias on test scores.
By: Steven Wise
Topics: Measurement & scaling, Innovations in reporting & assessment, School & test engagement


Response time as an indicator of test taker speed: assumptions meet reality
The growing presence of computer-based testing has brought with it the capability to routinely capture the time that test takers spend on individual test items. This, in turn, has led to an increased interest in potential applications of response time in measuring intellectual ability and achievement. Goldhammer (this issue) provides a very useful overview of much of the research in this area, and he provides a thoughtful analysis of the speed-ability trade-off and its impact on measurement.
By: Steven Wise
Topics: Measurement & scaling, Innovations in reporting & assessment, School & test engagement


Modeling student test-taking motivation in the context of an adaptive achievement test
This study examined the utility of response time-based analyses in understanding the behavior of unmotivated test takers. For an adaptive achievement test, patterns of observed rapid-guessing behavior and item response accuracy were compared to the behavior expected under several types of models that have been proposed to represent unmotivated test taking behavior.
Topics: Measurement & scaling, Growth modeling, School & test engagement


Making teacher goal setting more powerful
Most of us believe that when individuals have goals, their performance improves, and this belief is being put to the test in schools today. In an effort to create alignment between district and school improvement efforts, teachers are more likely than ever to have formal performance goals.
By: Andrew Hegedus
Topics: Empowering educators, High-growth schools & practices


The potential of adaptive assessment
In this article, the authors explain how CAT provides a more precise, accurate picture of the achievement levels of both low-achieving and high-achieving students by adjusting questions as the testing goes along. The immediate, informative test results enable teachers to differentiate instruction to meet individual students’ current academic needs.
By: Edward Freeman
Topics: Innovations in reporting & assessment, Measurement & scaling, Student growth & accountability policies


The phantom collapse of student achievement in New York
When New York state released the first results of the exams under the Common Core State Standards, many wrongly believed that the results showed dramatic declines in student achievement. A closer look at the results showed that student achievement may have increased.
By: John Cronin, Nate Jensen
Topics: Measurement & scaling