The potential of a multifunctional item bank in the assessment of mathematics and science achievement

Abstract

Reading, Mathematics, and Science have been universally considered as the very key academic subjects in any school education system. Student achievement on the subjects is mostly a primary concern, and international comparisons on them were commonly observed. Effective teachers assess their students in various ways during the school year to ensure that a high standard is achieved. External and national testing programs on these subjects are taking place not only for certification but also for diagnosing problems that might be associated with poor performance at different levels: schools, districts, provinces, and national. However, there is no a single test could satisfy these many different purposes of assessment. An assessment to diagnose problems faced by individual learner would require different instrument, method, and way of scoring from an assessment to align strategy of teaching or from an assessment for certification or selection. The idea of item banking is associated with the need for making test construction easier, faster, and more efficient. Availability and quick access to a large collection of good quality items will help both teachers and test developers in their various assessment tasks. Even more, teachers could concentrate on their teaching without having to spend much time on item construction. Many different test-forms of different assessment purposes could be constructed rapidly. When items in the bank are psychometrically validated and scaled! calibrated, scores from different test-forms can be compared without a need for items in common, and a criterion-referenced interpretation of a test-score is made possible. A multifunctional item bank, particularly when in combination with a computerized and net-worked system, could provide not only quality assessments of different purposes but also flexibility, consistency, economy, and security. Suggestion regarding the steps and procedures to the establishment of such kind of an item bank is provided in this paper.