Publications & Resources

Recommendations for Building a Valid Benchmark Assessment System: Second Report to the Jackson Public Schools

Jul 2007

David Niemi, Jia Wang, Haiwen Wang, Julia Vallone and Noelle Griffin

There are usually many testing activities going on in a school, with different tests serving different purposes, thus organization and planning are key in creating an efficient system in assessing the most important educational objectives. In the ideal case, an assessment system will be able to inform on student learning, instruction and curricula, and district and school administration, as well as providing information to identify and solve educational problems. This report represents the second of two deliverables provided to the Jackson Public Schools (JPS) and provides recommendations, based on ongoing discussions with the district and review of information from the benchmark assessments, on topics related to building a valid benchmark assessment system. We consider how item data can be used to improve benchmark tests over time and also cover what needs to be done to insure that results of a test are correctly interpreted, reported and used.

Niemi, D., Wang, J., Wang, H., Vallone, J., & Griffin, N. (2007). Recommendations for building a valid benchmark assessment system: Second report to the Jackson Public Schools (CRESST Report 724). Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST).