A COMPARISON OF APPROACHES FOR SETTING PROFICIENCY STANDARDS

The issue of setting standards is a critical one when considering the many states and local school districts mandating minimum competency testing programs, and with them, an associated, defensible proficiency standard. In the present study the cut-off scores from two different types of procedures are examined. Standards are determined from judgments about groups (Contrasting Groups method) and from an inspection of test content (Nedelsky method). Additionally, a methodological and statistical framework for analysis of the data to obtain the standard using the Contrasting Groups procedure is presented. The results indicated that there was neither consistency nor pattern to the cut-off scores set from the two procedures.