- Alignment: degree to which the components of an instructional plan work together to achieve a desired learning goal for students.
- Cognitive demand: level of thinking required to solve a problem, complete a task, or answer a question.
- Constructed response: student-created answer to a test item as in an essay.
- Content Crosswalk: method for examining correlations between different sets of standards.
- Content Clarification: process for researching a standard from the perspectives of the content knowledge base and factors that influence teaching and learning.
- Distractor: incorrect option within a test item.
- Embedded science concept: implicit idea that needs to be understood to successfully complete a test item.
- Enhanced multiple choice: question that elicits prior knowledge, integrates knowledge and process skills, and uses an enhancement such as a map, graph, speech excerpt.
- Essay: relatively short prose composition on a limited topic.
- Open-ended question: prompt that allows test-takers to respond in their own words
- Extended response: open-ended question that allows students to provide detailed written answers.
- Multiple choice: question in which the test-taker selects a response from several possible alternatives.
- Multiple selection: test item includes more than one correct answer that must be identified.
- Performance task: direct, systematic observation of a student action or product that is scored according to pre-established criteria.
- Released test item: previously used standardized test question or task that have been made available to the public.
- Scenario analysis: students respond to a task centered on an image or set of circumstances.
- Standardized Test Item Finder: tool that identifies websites that contain test items released by state departments of education or national agencies.
- State standards locator: tool with direct links to websites that contain state standards.
- Stem: statement or question used to frame a multiple-choice item.
- Stimulus: the section of the test item that creates the context for the question or task.
- Strand Maps: visual representations found in the Atlas of Science Literacy that illustrate the Learning Progressions embedded in standards.
- Test Item Analysis: process for designing instruction that is mindful of standardized testing.
- Topic study: careful analysis of a concept that examines the requisite content knowledge base and issues associated with teaching and learning.
- Webb’s Depth of Knowledge level: hierarchical scale that measures the cognitive complexity of a learning expectation (See: http://www.vermontinstitutes.org/assessment/web_depth.pdf).
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