The development of academic English proficiency and the time it takes to reclassify to fluent English proficient status are key issues in English learner (EL) policy. This article develops a shared random effects model (SREM) to estimate English proficiency development and time to reclassification simultaneously, treating student-specific random effects as latent covariates in the time to reclassification model.

This paper briefly discusses the trade-offs involved in making such a transition, and then focuses on a relatively unexplored benefit of computer-based tests – the control of construct-irrelevant factors that can threaten test score validity.

When computer-based tests are used, disengagement can be detected through occurrences of rapid-guessing behavior. This empirical study investigated the impact of a new effort monitoring feature that can detect rapid guessing, as it occurs, and notify proctors that a test taker has become disengaged.

In this study, we condition results from a variety of detection methods used to identify disengaged survey responses on response times. We then show how this conditional approach may be useful in identifying where to set response time thresholds for survey items, as well as in avoiding misclassification when using other detection methods.

This study investigates the impact of three different IRT scaling and equating methods in building an item bank of tests from 23 years of a national licensure exam . The study focuses on several key psychometric issues including scaledriftandequatingerrors.

The current study outlines a general process for measuring item-level effort that can be applied to an expanded set of item types and test-taking behaviors (such as omitted or constructed responses). This process, which is illustrated with data from a large-scale assessment program, should improve our ability to detect non-effortful test taking and perform individual score validation.

This article addresses the issue by estimating teacher value added, then applying extremely mild nonlinear transformations to the original scale and re-estimating the value added. Although by definition at most one of these scales can be equal-interval, all are treated as if interval-scaled when estimating value added.