This study explored how response style affects estimates of growth.

Most previous research involving the study of response times has been conducted using locally developed instruments. The purpose of the current study was to examine the amount of rapid-guessing behavior within a commercially available, low-stakes instrument.

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.

This integrative review examines the motivational benefits of computerized adaptive tests (CATs), and demonstrates that they can have important advantages over conventional tests in both identifying instances when examinees are exhibiting low effort, and effectively addressing the validity threat posed by unmotivated examinees.

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.

This article describes the decisions made in the development of CATs that influence and might threaten content alignment. It outlines a process for evaluating alignment that is sensitive to these threats and gives an empirical example of the process.

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.