Standard Setting: A Guide to Establishing and Evaluating Performance Standards on Tests

A well-timed text, given the legislated requirement of performance standards in our K-12 educational system, as well as the continued need in the process of credentialing professionals.  This book would be useful to individuals retained to produce or coordinate standard-setting activites. -- PsycCritiques Published On: 2007-12-14

It is abundantly apparent that the authors know standard setting and themselves have implemented numerous standard-setting procedures using different methods for different types of assessment programs.... Although the book is very practical, someone who has a fair amount of knowledge in standard setting will not feel shortchanged. There is a richness in the discussions of the methods that engages the reader, such as the different modifications of a method and the situational challenge that warranted each modification. Also, when a specific implementation of a method is discussed in detail, the authors are very conscientious in discussing the impetus for the adaptations. The historical perspective presented for some of the methods is quite intriguing.

Gregory J. Cizek is Professor of Educational Measurement at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His background in the field of educa­tional assessment includes five years as a manager of licensure and certification testing programs for American College Testing (ACT) in Iowa City, Iowa, and 15 years of teaching experience at the col­lege level, where his teaching assignments have consisted primarily of graduate courses in educational testing, research methods, and statistics. He is the author of over 200 books, chapters, articles, conference papers, and reports. His books include Handbook of Educational Policy (Academic Press, 1998); Cheating on Tests: How to Do It, Detect It, and Prevent It (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999); Setting Performance Standards: Concepts, Methods, and Perspectives (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001); and Detecting and Preventing Classroom Cheating (Corwin Press, 2003). Dr. Cizek has served as an elected member and vice president of a local school board in Ohio, and he currently works with several states, organizations, and the U.S. Department of Education on tech­nical and policy issues related to large-scale standards-based testing programs for students in grades K–12. He began his career as an ele­mentary school teacher in Michigan, where he taught second and fourth grades.

Michael B. Bunch is Vice-President of Measurement Incorporated, a test development and scoring company serving the statewide assessment community. Dr. Bunch joined MI in 1982 and has built the research and development division of that organization into a team of more than 60 project directors, psychometricians, editors, content specialists, and support staff. Prior to joining MI, Dr. Bunch was a senior professional with NTS Research Corporation, where he provided ESEA Title I evaluation technical assistance to state education agencies. From 1976 to 1978, he was a research psychologist with the American College Testing Program (ACT). Dr. Bunch has authored dozens of professional and technical reports on a variety of topics--many on standard setting--and has presented his work at national conferences, including annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), American Psychological Association (APA), Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), Education Commission of the States (ECS) and Adult Education Research Conference (AERC). He received his Ph.D. in psychological measurement from the University of Georgia.