Maryland Assessment Research Center (MARC)

2015 MARC Conference

The Fifteenth Annual Maryland Assessment Conference:

Test Fairness in the New Generation of Large-Scale Assessment

  • Jointly supported by the Maryland State Department of Education and the Maryland Assessment Research Center. 
  • Each topic will be given a one-hour block of time, including a 50-minute presentation by each speaker followed by 10 minutes of Q and A.

Presentation Schedule

Thursday, October 29th, 2015

Time Title Presenter(s)
7:00-8:30

Registration and Breakfast

 
8:30-8:45

Welcome and Comments

Hong Jiao (University of Maryland)
8:45-9:45 Resolving the paradox of rich performance tasks with implications for fairness Robert Mislevy (ETS)
9:45-10:45 How to achieve comparability of testing across different modes? Wim van der Linden (Pacific Metrics)
10:45-11:00 Break
11:00-12:00 The effect of compromised items on credentialing exam classification accuracy Patrick Obregon and Ray Yan (FINRA)
12:00-1:00 Lunch
1:00-2:00 Considerations in making next gen assessment accessible and fair Linda Zimmerman, Jan McSorley and Paul Grudnitski(Pearson)
2:00-3:00 Redesigning the SAT using principles of fairness and equity Sherral Miller, Michael Walker, Lynn Letukas(College Board)
3:00-3:15 Break
3:15-4:15 Test fairness in international assessments Matthias von Davier (ETS)
4:15-5:15 Culture in fair assessment practices Edynn Sato (Pearson)

Friday, October 30th, 2015

7:00-8:30

Registration and Breakfast

 
8:30-9:30 Contrasting various explanatory approaches to think about and analyze test data to address fairness: causal, contextual, ecological  Bruno D. Zumbo and Amery D. Wu (University of British Columbia)
9:30-10:30 Using Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition to explore differential item functioning:application to PISA 2009 reading Daniel Bolt, Maritza Dowling, Yu-Shan Shih and Wei-Yin Loh (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
10:30-10:45 Break  
10:45-11:45 Fairness considerations in automated essay scoring Mo Zhang, Neil Dorans, Chen Li and André Rupp (ETS)
11:45-12:45 Defining and Challenging Fairness in Tests: Key opportunities in test specifications, standard setting, and score interpretations Christina Schneider, Karla Egan and Brian Gong (Center for Assessment)
12:45-1:00 Closing Comments  Robert Lissitz (University of Maryland)