Requirements for fair measurement of student achievement
A measurement procedure can only be completely fair if the conditions are the same for all students completing the task. The conditions needed for fair and valid testing include the following:
- The meaning of the test score must be the same for all students. This implies that the questions in all forms of the test are the same or very similar in terms of course objectives assessed and the average difficulty of the questions. There must also be the same number of questions on each possible form of the test. The scoring of each form of a test must be identical in terms of question weight and partial credit schemes.
- The amount of time given to complete the test must be the same for all students except in verifiable cases where allowance of extra time is sanctioned for students having certain disabilities.
- The resources that are permitted to be available during the testing period must be available to all students. Disallowed crib sheets violate this requirement.
- The resources permitted to be used outside the testing period must be available to all students. Stolen tests and answers clearly violate this requirement, but so do private practice sets of test questions scavenged from the memories of students.