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Commentary on the National Mathematics Advisory Panel Recommendations on Assessment

LORRIE A. SHEPARD is dean and professor in the School of Education at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Campus Box 249, Boulder, CO 80309; lorrie.shepard{at}colorado.edu. Her research focuses on psychometric topics such as validity theory, standard setting, and test bias, and evaluations of test use in contexts such as the identification of learning disabilities, kindergarten readiness screening, grade retention, teacher testing, high-stakes accountability testing, and formative assessment

Foundations for Success: The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (2008) recommends that National Assessment of Educational Progress and state tests focus on foundations of algebra and include fewer pattern-type algebra items. Greater mathematics expertise is needed in test development to prevent flawed items. The Panel reached the erroneous conclusion that multiple-choice and constructed response items measure the same thing because it relied on studies where the two item types were constrained to be identical. The Panel’s recommendations on standard setting are misleading because it relied on a single simulation study. By focusing only on special education studies, its discussion of formative assessment implies that formative assessment requires formal tools administered and scored frequently and fails to recognize more interactive forms of feedback found in studies from cognitive science.

Key Words: assessment • NAEP • standard setting

Educational Researcher, Vol. 37, No. 9, 602-609 (2008)
DOI: 10.3102/0013189X08328001


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