The ability to coherently assess content knowledge throughout an entire undergraduate career represents a significant advantage for programmatic assessment strategies. Chemistry, as a discipline, has an unusual tool in this regard because of the nationally standardized exams from the ACS Exams Institute. These exams are norm-referenced and allow chemistry departments to make comparisons between the performance of their own students relative to national samples; however, currently there appears to be no systematic means for noting students' content knowledge growth over a four-year degree. The Exams Institute is undertaking the task of organizing content along an anchoring concept or "big ideas" framework to facilitate this type of analysis.

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Test scores matter these days. Test‐takers want to understand how they performed, and test score reports, particularly those for individual examinees, are the vehicles by which most people get the bulk of this information. Historically, score reports have not always met the examinees’ information or usability needs, but this is clearly changing for the better due to recent, much‐needed additions to the psychometric literature as well as improved efforts in reporting practices. This paper provides an overview of score reports from a development perspective, focusing on current practices and emerging efforts in content of reports as well as the process by which reports are designed, evaluated, and ultimately used to communicate with the public.

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