Studies have also begun to shed light on the factors—other than simple cheating—that cause score inflation, such as focusing instruction on material emphasized by the test at the expense of other important aspects of the curriculum; focusing on unimportant details of a particular test; and teaching test-taking tricks. Score inflation is a preoccupation of mine, both because I have been investigating this problem for more than fifteen years and because I think it is one of the most serious hurdles we need to surmount if we are to find more effective ways of using tests for accountability.
