Comparative Study On China-US'Item Development In Standard-based And Large Scale Achivement Assessment In Mathemetics

The United States witnessed the standards-based educational reform in the1980s and China experienced the eighth curriculum reform in the late nineties, which was based on the standards-based educational reform in essence. The nature of the standards-based educational reform is the coherence of standard, instruction and assessment. It is a systemic reform and it needs the coordination and changes of all the elements in the education system so that it has a beneficial effect on education. As curriculum standard is the basement and instruction of curriculum design, textbook compiling and the achievement assessment, curriculum standard of high quality is of the utmost importance. Standards-based achievement assessment also plays an important role and it can promote the curriculum reform, for it guides, stimulates, promotes and diagnoses the education process. The guiding effect of achievement assessment in large scale is particularly prominent. Item development in Standards-based and large-scale mathematics achievement assessment system either in China or in America appears some problems. Therefore, the research of the theory, technology and practical problems of item development for mathematics remains significant. The technology of educational assessment in the USA is the most advanced in the world, so the comparative studies of item development in China and America contribute to the reference and learning each other.Item development of standards-based and large-scale mathematics achievement assessment mostly follows the following sequence:to formulate test specification and item specification→to select and train item developer→item developing→item reviewing→pilot testing→field testing→item analyzing→to analyze the alignment between test and curriculum standard. This paper is organized according to this logical organization. First, the author states the testing theories and technology of item developing. Then the paper goes on to the comparison of the practice between in China and in America. When making a case comparison between the two countries, this paper mainly takes test development based on common core state standards in America as an example. As this assessment will be carried out in the academic year of2014-2015and some sections of the assessment still do not begin, the author gives an illustration of test development for the time being in some states as the beneficial supplement. After all, the test theories on which the test development is based have a lot in common. The paper also takes junior high school academic proficiency exam and high school academic proficiency exam in some provinces in China as an example, among which, S province and Shanghai city's education quality maintain the leading position.The first Chapter presents the research background and the research foundation in general.The second Chapter discusses the procedure, amendment, content and quality of mathematics standard. When we study the item development of standards-based and large-scale mathematics achievement assessment, we find that even the most advanced item technology cannot have a satisfying effect on education. Therefore, the second chapter puts emphasis on discussing the processes and the principles of the formulation and amendment of curriculum standard. However, the normative procedures and reasonable principles cannot ensure the high quality of curriculum standard. As a result, we should judge the quality of curriculum standard according to some quality requirement.The third Chapter discusses the formulation of content specification, test specification and item specification. According to the assessment of common core state standards, it draws up the content specification first which will be taken as the instructional documents of test specification and item specification. So in the first part in the third chapter, the paper states the content specification.The fourth Chapter presents the selection and the training of item developer and discusses the knowledge structures and the cognitive processes of item writing experts for to know well about the knowledge structures and a cognitive model of item-writing expertise is helpful to select and train item developer.The fifth Chapter presents the classification and construction of items, as well as the advantages and the disadvantages.The sixth Chapter discusses the item review, pilot test, field test of items and item analysis. Even the expertise item writers cannot guarantee the high quality of the items they wrote, since human make mistakes inevitably. Moreover, they can not reflect the diversity of culture because of the limitation of their personal experience. All in all, it is necessary of reviewing the items. Although the item reviewers tend to have rich teaching experience, they have no idea of what the cognitive processes of the test takers really is, and they just have to base their judgment on their experience and speculation. As a result, test developers should pilot-test the items on the representative samples, usually made of ten-twenty test takers. And then, it is more often than that the items needs to be field tested on large scale, and embedded field testing is generally preferred. The data gathered in field testing are used to conduct item analysis.The seventh Chapter discusses the alignment between the assessments and the curriculum standards. Researches indicated that the higher alignment index among the assessments, instruction and curriculum standards, the higher achievement of the students. Accordingly, it is urgent to develop a model to calculate the alignment index.