To his evident annoyance, I responded that this would not be a sensible undertaking because there is no optimal design. Rather, designing a testing program is an exercise in trade-offs and compromise, and a judgment about which compromise is best will depend on specifics, such as the particular uses to which scores will be put. For example, the assessment designs that are best for providing descriptive information about the performance of groups (such as schools, districts, states, or even entire nations) are not suitable for systems in which the performance of individual students must be
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