The Prevalence of Construct Irrelevance in High-Stakes Test Items

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: The Integration of Cognition and Assessment: Improving Assessment Development and Score Interpretations and Utilization

Abstract

The Common Core State Standards in Mathematics require that students learn math through real world situations. To meet these requirements, math test items have become lengthy word problems. As a result, it is unclear that we are always measuring math ability without the conflation of literacy. Through linguistic analyses and cognitive interviews with third-grade students, we illustrate item-level construct-irrelevant factors that are not being attended to with current item development practices. We found that math items had reading levels above third-grade level and exhibited multiple features of linguistic complexity which led to participant confusion.

Authors

• Kevin Close, The Spencer Foundation

• Pamela L. Paek