Modern computer technology has opened up several new possibilities for optimizing the administration of educational and psychological tests. In computer adaptive testing (CAT), tests are automatically tailored to the proficiency level of the individual examinees. Currently, nearly all large-scale testing programs in the western world are already adaptive or in the process of becoming so. Written by active CAT researchers from Europe and North America, the chapters offer a comprehensive introduction to the latest developments in the theory and practice of CAT. The book can be used both as a basic reference on the state of the art in CAT and a valuable resource in graduate courses on test theory. The theoretical chapters in this book cover such topics as item selection and ability estimation, item pool development and maintenance, item calibration and model fit, and testlet-based adaptive testing. The practical chapters describe the operational aspects of existing large-scale CAT programs.

At a time when the importance of lifelong education is becoming recognised around the world, this is the first book to explore an important but hitherto neglected area: adult mathematics education. This book is about adults learning mathematics wherever and in whatever circumstances they do so. It brings together researchers in the field and aims to lay the foundations for study and further research and practice in this fast-developing area. It aims to situate research and practice in adults learning mathematics within the wider field of lifelong learning and lifelong education and to be accessible both to the specialist and to the general adult reader. The book features a comprehensive review of the field which sets the scene for sections on: Perspectives on Research on Adults Learning Mathematics; Adults, Mathematics, Culture, and Society; Adults, Mathematics, and Work; and Perspectives in Teaching Adults Mathematics. Topics covered include: mathematics and common sense; statistical literacy and numeracy; new theories on learning mathematics; mathematical competences for the workplace; ethnomathematics; and the training of tutors.

Diane Shorrocks-Taylor School of Education, University of Leeds, UK In September 1998, a conference was held at the University of Leeds entitled 'International comparisons of pupil performance: issues and policy'. It was arranged by two groups within the School of Education at the University, the newly formed Assessment and Evaluation Unit and the Centre for Studies in Science and Mathematics Education. Thejoint interest in international comparisons of performance had itself arisen from earlier involvement in a follow-up study of the 1995 TIMSS work in England, reported in a later chapter in this book, in which the TIMSS assessment outcomes were studied alongside the outcomes from the National Curriculum testing programme in England. Some of the results of this investigation had proved both interesting and challenging so the decision was made to promote wider discussion of some key issues by inviting contributors from all over the world to a meeting the major aims of which were to promote an exploration of: - the theoretical foundations of international comparative studies of student performance; - the practical problems of carrying out such studies; - the appropriateness of the assessment models and approaches used in international comparisons; - the role of international comparative studies in raising standards of student performance; - and how international studies affect the shaping of national policy on education.

In 1976, the first session on the teaching of evaluation was held at an annual meeting of evaluators. A few hardy souls gathered to exchange ideas on improving the teaching of evaluation. At subsequent annual meetings, these informal sessions attracted more and more participants, eager to talk about common teaching interests and to exchange reading lists, syllabuses, assignments, and paper topics. The ses sions were irreverent, innovative, lively, and unpredictable. Eventually the group for malized itself with the American Evaluation Association as the Topical Interest Group in the Teaching of Evaluation (TIG: TOE). As word of TIG: TOE's activities spread, instructors from all over the country clamored for assistance and advice. It became apparent that a handbook was need ed, a practical interdisciplinary guide to the teaching of evaluation. Donna M. Mertens, a long-standing member of TIG: TOE and an accomplished teacher of evaluation, volunteered to edit the book, and her skills, sensitivity, and experience in the craft of teaching are apparent throughout."

This collection of articles describing different aspects of the developments taking place in today's workplace and how they affect business education provides truly global coverage of innovation in the field.

Perspectives on the Classification of Specific Developmental Disorders is an up-to-date review of the controversy surrounding the classification of such disparate disorders as reading, spelling, writing, and language disorders. Severe and specific impairments in these functions do exist and appear to follow a developmental course. How to identify children presenting with such problems and how to operationalize the disorders has long challenged professionals. This text grew from an international symposium held in the Netherlands, but all chapters have been specially prepared for the publication. Described in the foreword by Sir Michael Rutter, FRS, as ... thoughtful and well informed discussions ... that may serve as a basis for a problem-solving set of both research strategies and practical steps that will ensure real resolutions of the dilemmas outlined here', the text should serve as a stimulating source for debate of the many issues involved.

Wim van der Linden was just given a lifetime achievement award by the National Council on Measurement in Education. There is no one more prominent in the area of educational testing.

There are hundreds of computer-based credentialing exams in areas such as accounting, real estate, nursing, and securities, as well as the well-known admissions exams for college, graduate school, medical school, and law school - there is great need on the theory of testing.

This book presents the statistical theory and practice behind constructing good tests e.g., how is the first test item selected, how are the next items selected, and when do you have enough items.

This book provides an alternative method for measuring individual differences in psychological, educational, and other behavioral sciences studies. It is based on the assumptions of ordinal statistics as explained in Norman Cliff's 1996 Ordinal Methods for Behavioral Data Analysis. It provides the necessary background on ordinal measurement to permit its use to assess psychological and psychophysical tests and scales and interpret the data obtained. The authors believe that some of the behavioral measurement models used today do not fit the data or are inherently self-contradictory. Applications of these models can therefore lead to unwarranted inferences regarding the status of the derived variables. These methods can also be difficult to apply, particularly in small-sample contexts without making additional, unrealistic assumptions. Ordinal methods more closely reflect the original data, are simple to apply, and can be used in samples of any size. The book's approach is in essence a return to simple empiricism in psychological measurement. Ordinal Measurement in the Behavioral Sciences provides: *methods for analyzing test responses; *extensive discussions of ordinal approaches to analyzing data that are judgments of stimuli; *methods for treating psychological data in ways consistent with its ordinal nature so as to stimulate new developments in this area; and *ordinal test theory and the unfolding methods that are applicable to cross-cultural studies. Advanced students, researchers, and practitioners concerned with psychological measurement should find this book relevant. Measurement professionals will find it provides useful and simple methods that stimulate thought about measurement's real issues.

By bringing together leading experts on quality assurance in higher education from seven countries (from Europe, the USA and South Africa), this volume intends to go several steps further than most publications on the same subject. Containing comprehensive discussion of the most relevant trends in quality assurance regulation, translation and transformation, researchers and policy makers will find an engaged, academic reflection on how quality assurance is embedded in higher education and in a dynamic way to assess its impacts and potential improvements.

The present book, Cases of Assessment in Mathematics Education, is one of two studies resulting from an ICMI Study Conference on Assessment in Mathematics Education and Its Effects. The book which is published in the series of ICMI Studies under the general editorship of the President and Secretary of ICMI is closely related to another study resulting from the same conference: Investigations into Assessment in Mathematics Education (Niss, 1992). The two books, although originating from the same sources and having the same editor, emphasize different aspects of assessment in mathematics education and can be read independently of one another. While the present book is devoted to presenting and discussing cases of assessment that are actually implemented, the other study attempts to critically analyze general and principal aspects of assessment. Naturally, the content of either book is enriched by the materials and perspectives provided by the other one. In order to put this book and its background into context, the nature and scope of the ICMI studies are outlined briefly below.

This book is one of the first to attempt a systematic in-depth analysis of assessment in mathematics education in most of its important aspects: it deals with assessment in mathematics education from historical, psychological, sociological, epistmological, ideological, and political perspectives. The book is based on work presented at an invited international ICMI seminar and includes chapters by a team of outstanding and prominent scholars in the field of mathematics education. Based on the observation of an increasing mismatch between the goals and accomplishments of mathematics education and prevalent assessment modes, the book assesses assessment in mathematics education and its effects. In so doing it pays particular attention to the need for and possibilities of assessing a much wider range of abilities than before, including understanding, problem solving and posing, modelling, and creativity. The book will be of particular interest to mathematics educators who are concerned with the role of assessment in mathematics education, especially as regards innovation, and to everybody working within the field of mathematics education and related areas: in R&D, curriculum planning, assessment institutions and agencies, teacher trainers, etc.

This edited volume gives a new and integrated introduction to item re sponse models (predominantly used in measurement applications in psy chology, education, and other social science areas) from the viewpoint of the statistical theory of generalized linear and nonlinear mixed models. Moreover, this new framework aHows the domain of item response mod els to be co-ordinated and broadened to emphasize their explanatory uses beyond their standard descriptive uses. The basic explanatory principle is that item responses can be modeled as a function of predictors of various kinds. The predictors can be (a) char acteristics of items, of persons, and of combinations of persons and items; they can be (b) observed or latent (of either items or persons); and they can be (c) latent continuous or latent categorical. Thus, a broad range of models can be generated, including a wide range of extant item response models as weH as some new ones. Within this range, models with explana tory predictors are given special attention, but we also discuss descriptive models. Note that the 'item responses' that we are referring to are not just the traditional 'test data, ' but are broadly conceived as categorical data from a repeated observations design. Hence, data from studies with repeated-observations experimental designs, or with longitudinal designs, mayaIso be modeled. The intended audience for this volume is rather broad."

I personally learned to know Ralph Tyler rather late in his career when, in the 1960s, I spent a year as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. His term of office as Director of the Center was then approaching its end. This would seem to disqualify me thoroughly from preparing a Foreword to this "Classic Works. " Many of his colleagues and, not least, of his students at his dear Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, are certainly better prepared than I to put his role in American education in proper perspective. The reason for inviting me is, I assume, to bring out the influence that Tyler has had on the international educational scene. I am writing this Foreword on a personal note. Ralph Tyler's accomplishments in his roles as a scholar, policy maker, educational leader, and statesman have been amply put on record in this book, not least in the editors' Preface. My reflections are those of an observer from abroad but who, over the last 25 years, has been close enough to overcome the aloofness of the foreigner. Tyler has over many years been criss-crossing the North American con tinent generously giving advice to agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, lecturing, and serving on many committees and task forces that have been instrumental in shaping American education."

When George Bernard Shaw wrote his play, Pygmalion, he could hardly have foreseen the use of the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy in debates about standardized testing in schools. Still less could he have foreseen that the validity of the concept would be examined many years later in Irish schools. While the primary purpose of the experimental study reported in this book was not to investigate the Pygmalion effect, it is inconceivable that a study of the effects of standardized testing, conceived in the 1960s and planned and executed in the 1970s, would not have been influenced by thinking about teachers' expectations and the influence of test information on the formation of those expectations. While our study did pay special attention to teacher expectations, its scope was much wider. It was planned and carried out in a much broader framework, one in which we set out to examine the impact of a standardized testing program, not just on teachers, but also on school practices, students, and students' parents.

Ingrained for many years in the science of educational assessment were a large number of "truths" about how to make sense out of testing results, artful wisdoms that appear to have held away largely by force of habit alone. Practitioners and researchers only occasionally agreed about how tests should be designed, and were even further apart when they came to interpreting test responses by any means other than categorically "right" or "wrong." Even the best innovations were painfully slow to be incorporated into practice. The traditional approach to testing was developed to accomplish only two tasks: to provide ranking of students, or to select relatively small proportions of students for special treatment. In these tasks it was fairly effective, but it is increasingly seen as inadequate for the broader spectrum of issues that educational measurement is now called upon to address. Today the range of questions being asked of educational test data is itself growing by leaps and bounds. Fortunately, to meet this challenge we have available a wide panoply of resource tools for assessment which deserve serious attention. Many of them have exceptionally sOphisticated mathematical foundations, and succeed well where older and less versatile techniques fail dismally. Yet no single new tool can conceivably cover the entire arena.

In our current education system too many high school students wind up with too few choices. Students are locked into what is decided for them by a broken system. Too often, they are handed a diploma that holds an empty promise. This practical field book is filled with effective tools from The Education Trust-West. Diploma Matters helps school leaders and teachers examine the current high school experience and develop a detailed action plan that will transform curriculum and ensure that all students are ready for college and the workplace.

"This is a book for practitioners who have seen it all. Linda Murray captures in a straight-forward way the nuts and bolts of how to do the work of reform. Linda, who was an extraordinary superintendent, proves to be a captivating storyteller."--Peter J. Negroni, senior vice president, College Board

"This is a story worth reading, including the specific implications for schools and districts nationwide."--Michael W. Kirst, emeritus professor of Education and Business Administration, Stanford University; president, California State Board of Education; author, Political Dynamics Of American Education

"This book is a definitive 'how to' for effective, meaningful, and lasting school reform." --Kathy Burkhard, former president, San Jose Teachers' Association

Educational systems are now more than ever faced with the challenge of improving their performance and proving that suitable measures are being taken to guarantee greater efficiency regarding equity. Bringing together a wide range of disciplines and experience in several countries, this book details possible models of governance and describes ways to measure their effects in terms of efficiency and equity.

Testing matters It can determine kids' and schools' futures. In a conference at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, mathematicians, maths education researchers, teachers, test developers, and policymakers gathered to work through critical issues related to mathematics assessment. They examined: * The challenges of assessing student learning in ways that support instructional improvement; * Ethical issues related to assessment, including the impact of testing on urban and high-poverty schools; * The different (and sometimes conflicting) needs of the different groups; and * Different frameworks, tools, and methods for assessment, comparing the kinds of information they offer about students' mathematical proficiency. This volume presents the results of the discussions. It highlights the kinds of information that different assessments can offer, including many examples of some of the best mathematics assessments worldwide. A special feature is an interview with a student about his knowledge of fractions and a demonstration of what interviews (versus standardized tests) can reveal.

Generalizability theory offers an extensive conceptual framework and a powerful set of statistical procedures for characterizing and quantifying the fallibility of measurements. Robert Brennan, the author, has written the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of generalizability theory. The book provides a synthesis of those parts of the statistical literature that are directly applicable to generalizability theory. The principal intended audience is measurement practitioners and graduate students in the behavioral and social sciences, although a few examples and references are provided from other fields. Readers will benefit from some familiarity with classical test theory and analysis of variance, but the treatment of most topics does not presume specific background.

Regional cooperation in East Asia on various issue areas, such as emergency liquidity mechanisms in finance, the exponential growth of free trade agreements and policy coordination on the environment and public health, developed rapidly after the Asian Financial Crisis. A decade later, the global financial crisis offered a new opportunity for the nascent regional cooperation mechanisms to acquire new depth and meaning - this time, however, in a very different context due to the unfaltering rise of China. How have inter-state cooperation mechanisms, which were devised originally to deal with the problems of the past crisis, fared in the recent global economic turbulence? Can regional integration effectively insulate East Asia from the vagaries of the international market? Should East Asian nations heed the call for regionalism or globalism? This volume not only offers one of the first assessments of how the global economic crisis has affected the prospects for regional integration in East Asia, but it also addresses a number of long-standing debates of interest to East Asian specialists, economists and policymakers: Are crises catalysts for revamping developmental models? Do they provide solid foundations for regional solidarity and integration? Can they help catapult countries into the global limelight? This book was originally published as a special issue of The Pacific Review.

This valuable resource helps institutional leaders understand and implement a data strategy at their college or university that maximizes benefits to all creators and users of data. Exploring key considerations necessary for coordination of fragmented resources and the development of an effective, cohesive data strategy, this book brings together professionals from different higher education experiences and perspectives, including academic, administration, institutional research, information technology, and student affairs. Focusing on critical elements of data strategy and governance, each chapter in Data Strategy in Colleges and Universities helps higher education leaders address a frustrating problem with much-needed solutions for fostering a collaborative, data-driven strategy.

My interest in and appreciation for program evaluation began in the early 1970's when conducting a curriculum development research project at the University of Florida's P. K. Y onge Laboratory School. This interest was sparked when it became apparent that testing the success of an education program required more skills than just statistics and research methods. After pursuing additional formal schooling, I embarked on a career featuring educational program evaluation as its central thrust--as a private consultant, later in a university health sciences center involving seven academic colleges, and then in the Cooperative Extension Services of Florida and Maryland. Adding evaluability assessment (EA) to the performance of evaluations, to program development, and to teaching about evaluation has been a significant development for me personally, and I hope to those who have been participants with me in each endeavor. This book grew out of many of these experiences and involved numerous colleagues who made significant contributions. First among these is Dr. George Mayeske, Program Evaluation Specialist, Extension Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. c.

Aimed at researchers and students interested in language testing theory and practice, the chapters in this book vary in style and content and are both stimulating and robust. The book brings together a fascinating group of authors from the established to the new, presenting new ideas and challenging current orthodoxies.

In this book, experts in statistics and psychometrics describe classes of linkages, the history of score linkings, data collection designs, and methods used to achieve sound score linkages. They describe and critically discuss applications to a variety of domains. They define what linking is, to distinguish among the varieties of linking and to describe different procedure for linking. Furthermore, they convey the complexity and diversity of linking by covering different areas of linking and providing diverse perspectives.