Current reforms in science education envision students making sense of real-world phenomena in ways that leverage their ideas, experiences, and identities. Formative assessment is essential to this vision; however, we are still coming to understand how formative assessment design and enactment in classroom activity systems can support this vision.…

The Actionable Assessment project sought to improve the quality of the student assessment experience by designing and testing a digital reporting tool that engaged students in interpreting and using assessment results to foster their own learning. The tool was designed within the ONPAR assessment system which contains dynamic online science tasks…

Assessments are critical indicators of what is valued within education systems and can drive pedagogical practices at scale. However, existing large-scale assessments often fail to leverage students' cultural and linguistic assets as part of the disciplinary meaning-making process. This paper explores the intersection of culturally relevant,…

Assessment for Learning (AfL) practices provide opportunities for teachers and students to learn with and from each other. Less well established are the roles that the material and affective configurations of classroom spaces play in AfL interactions between teachers and students, students with peers and students with ideas. Feedback, dialogue,…

Because examinees have no personal consequences for their performance in low-stakes testing, some examinees expend minimal effort. Given research in the domain of normative conduct, factors that may be contributing to expended effort include whether the examinee believes effort should be put forth (i.e., personal normative beliefs), how much…

Culturally responsive (CR) assessments have three major goals: (a) increasing cultural representation in items, (b) fostering cultural competence and antiracist mind-sets in test takers, and (c) more accurately measuring all test takers' abilities. However, limited resources exist in how to create CR items or what CR items could look like.…

State education agencies are increasingly interested in developing and adopting through-course assessment models to meet statewide assessment and accountability requirements. However, because many of these systems are still under development, limited information about teacher perceptions of these administration models is available. We used focus…

Although popular educational theories regard ability as being intrinsically multidimensional, academic ability is typically measured with a single, overall score. In this paper, we examine data from the adaptive tutoring system ALEKS to compare three metrics that measure different constructs of mathematical ability that vary in dimensionality. We…

Advancement of testing of mathematical problem-solving skills calls for open-ended, realistic tasks particularly susceptible to bias, compromising the score validity and fairness of tests. Informed by universal design principles, this study framed 360 prototype items developed for the "Problem-solving Measures Grades 6-8 Computer Adaptive…

This study evaluated differential item functioning (DIF) in achievement motivation items before and after using anchoring vignettes as a statistical tool to account for group differences in response styles across gender and ethnicity. We applied the nonparametric scoring of the vignettes to motivation items from the 2015 Programme for…

This article illustrates and differentiates the unique role cognitive interviews and think-aloud interviews play in developing and validating assessments. Specifically, we describe the use of (a) cognitive interviews to gather empirical evidence to support claims about the intended construct being measured and (b) think-aloud interviews to gather…

Student perception surveys are prominent and pervasive tools for teacher appraisal and feedback across international contexts, buoyed by the strong relationship between higher student ratings of teachers and additional measures of teacher effectiveness. Yet, there is disagreement and conflicting evidence regarding the underlying structure of…

In 2006-2007, California revised its English language proficiency (ELP) assessment, the California English Language Development Test (CELDT), which resulted in more stringent criteria and higher cut scores for meeting proficiency. Using regression discontinuity designs and a difference-in-differences approach, this study examines the effects of…

Standardized observation systems seek to reliably measure a specific conceptualization of teaching quality, managing rater error through mechanisms such as certification, calibration, validation, and double-scoring. These mechanisms both support high quality scoring and generate the empirical evidence used to support the scoring inference (i.e.,…

High-stakes assessments are a common feature of many education systems. One argument often made against their use, however, is that they have a negative impact on wellbeing across the education sector, including teachers. We present new evidence on this matter by examining how the Statutory Assessment Tests (SATs) conducted in England's primary…