Large-scale assessment systems: Design principles drawn from international comparisons

Abstract Notes 1As explained in the introduction, the United States Government sponsored the preparation of an earlier version of this paper. However, any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Government, or the National Academy of Science. 2These outlines are available at http://bearcenter.berkeley.edu/measurement/pubs/tocindex.html. 3This is particularly ironic since the Japanese and UK assessments measure subject knowledge acquired in school, which is therefore at least somewhat within the school's control, while the whole reason for the original development of the SAT was to minimize the contribution of preparation on students' scores (CitationLemann, 1999). 4Because as noted earlier there is a tendency for the spread of achievement to increase with age, this index is not independent of age.