The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a read aloud testing accommodation on students with and without a learning disability in reading. A sample of 260 midwestern middle school students (24% with a learning disability in reading, and 76% without such a disability) were randomly assigned to two experimental conditions for testing with four tests of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. The test conditions were standard administration and reading the tests aloud to the students. Based on a two-way (2 x 2) analysis of variance, with test administration and student status as the two fixed factors, the students with learning disabilities in reading, as well as those without, exhibited statistically significant gains with the read aloud test administration. Interaction effects were not significant. Implications of these results for the read aloud accommodation are presented.

The widespread accessibility to large, networked computer labs at educational sites and commercial testing centers, coupled with fast-paced advances in both computer technology and measurement theory, along with the availability of off-the-shelf software for test delivery, all help to make the computerized assessment of individuals more efficient and accurate than assessment using traditional paper-and-pencil (P&P) tests. Computer adaptive testing (CAT) is a form of computerized assessment that has achieved a strong foothold in licensure and certification testing and is finding greater application in many other areas as well, including education. A CAT differs from a straightforward, linear test in that an item(s) is selected for each test taker based on his/her performance on previous items. As such, assessment is tailored online to accommodate the test taker's estimated ability and confront the examinee with items that best measure that ability.

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Since the 1940s, measurement specialists have called for an empirical validation technique that combines content-and construct-related evidence. This study investigated the value of such a technique. A self-assessment instrument designed to cover four traditional foreign language skills was administered to 1,404 college-level foreign language students. Four subject-matter experts were asked to provide item dissimilarity judgments, using whatever criteria they thought appropriate. The data from the students and the experts were examined separately using multidimensional scaling followed by cluster and discriminant analyses. Results showed that the structure of the data underlying both the student and expert scaling solutions corresponded closely to that specified in the instrument blueprint. In addition, using canonical correlation, a comparison of the two scaling solutions revealed a high degree of similarity in the two solutions.