Item Development
Ballard & Tighe recently conducted a series of successful item writing workshops to create test items for the new IPT testing system. Following NCLB requirements, these test items concentrate on Academic English and cover reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills.

Throughout the month of February 2004, experienced teachers and other educators convened at the Kellogg West Conference Center on the Cal Poly Pomona campus in Southern California to write test items based on specifications developed by the Ballard & Tighe assessment team. The workshops were led by Ballard & Tighe’s director of assessment, Dr. Sari Luoma, together with expert item writing specialists from across the United States. Participating educators were given training on item writing and the skill definitions in the test specifications, after which they worked in grade-span specific groups to write test items under the guidance of item writing specialists. The following series of workshops was arranged:

Writing Test Workshop - February 1
Representing all content areas and grades, teachers wrote multiple-choice questions to assess students’ grammar and knowledge of written conventions. They also wrote writing prompts to elicit students’ productive writing capabilities.

Speaking Test Workshop - February 7-8
Working collaboratively, teachers developed picture specifications and hundreds of items to assess students’ English speaking proficiency. Among other things, the items created will require students to make predictions, express opinions, read equations, explain graphs, and discuss processes.

Listening Test Workshop - February 14-15
With guidance from item writing specialists, educators worked to develop a substantial range of items to test English learners’ listening proficiency. Along with the test items, item writers developed numerous picture specifications, dialogues, word problems, and other passages. Sources for generating items included passages played from audio CDs; the final version of the Listening Test will require students to listen to audio text.

Reading Test Workshop - February 21-22
Aided by item writing specialists, item writers - most coming with experience from previous workshops - generated items to test reading comprehension, graphic understanding, and vocabulary in context. Item writers also took the opportunity to edit and compile reading passages and create graph and picture specifications for the test.

Review Process
To ensure national representation and unbiased items, the newly created items underwent three careful reviews; one by grade-level teachers across the United States, one by members of a Bias/Sensitivity Panel, and one by language acquisition and testing experts.

Field Testing
After the careful item development and review process, the items were field tested in numerous schools across the United States. The data from the field testing was analyzed in the summer of 2004, after which the first forms of the IPT test were constructed.

Download February 2004 Newsletter reporting item-writing progress for the IPT Testing System.