The use of assessment results to inform school accountability relies on the assumption that the test design appropriately represents the content and cognitive emphasis reflected in the state's standards. Since the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act and the certification of accountability assessments through federal peer review practices, the content validity arguments supporting accountability have relied almost exclusively on the alignment of statewide assessments to state standards. It is assumed that if alignment does not hold, the scores will not provide valid inferences regarding the degree to which test takers have performed. Although alignment results are commonly used as evidence of test appropriateness, Polikoff (this issue) would argue that given the importance of alignment in policy decisions, research related to alignment is surprisingly limited. Few studies have addressed the adequacy of alignment methodologies and results as support for the inferences to be made (i.e., proficient on state standards). This paper uses an example of test taker performance (and common performance indicators) to investigate to what extent the degree of alignment impacts inferences made about performance (i.e., classification into performance levels, estimates of student ability, and student rank order).

中文翻译：

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对应试者的调整和启示

使用评估结果来告知学校问责制是基于这样的假设，即测试设计适当代表了州标准中反映的内容和认知重点。自从通过《每个学生成功法案》并通过联邦同行评审实践对责任评估进行认证以来，支持问责的内容有效性论点几乎完全依赖于将州范围评估与州标准保持一致。假定如果对齐不成立，则分数将无法提供有关应试者完成程度的有效推论。尽管一致性结果通常被用作测试适当性的证据，但Polikoff（本期）会认为，鉴于一致性在政策决策中的重要性，与对准有关的研究令人惊讶地受到限制。很少有研究解决比对方法论和结果的充分性，以支持将要做出的推论（即精通国家标准）。本文以考生表现（和共同的表现指标）为例，研究结对程度在多大程度上影响对表现的推断（即，对表现水平的分类，对学生能力的估计以及对学生的排名顺序）。