Scale Scores
Description
For the ELPAC, student performance levels are assigned on the basis of scale scores. Each grade level and grade span content-area assessment has its own scale score range. Scale score ranges were identified during a process called “standard setting.” Scale scores provide a common reference between administrations.
Scale scores offer a more precise way to determine students’ performance on the computer-based assessments than performance levels. The scale score ranges and performance levels are listed in appendix A.
Scale Score Ranges
Scale scores are used in the evaluation of overall student performance because psychometric analyses underlying these scores account for the variations in difficulty for the items that students are administered. If equivalent students were administered forms varying in difficulty, student scale scores would still be comparable.
Scale scores are associated with performance levels that describe the underlying student performance. The ranges of scale scores that are associated with each performance level are held constant from year to year for each grade level, while the number- or percent-correct score (i.e., the raw score) associated with each scale score may change.
The scale score ranges for each assessment at each grade level will have a HOSS and a LOSS. These are limits set to the scale score ranges so that all scale scores represent reliable measures of student performance. If a student receives the HOSS, it does not necessarily mean that they answered all items correctly; the LOSS does not necessarily indicate that the student answered all questions incorrectly.
Each assessment grade level or grade span has its own scale score range; these are listed in appendix A.
Equating and Scaling
When tests are constructed for each grade level or grade span, every effort is made to make the tests parallel and of the same level of difficulty from one year to another. However, even with those efforts, small differences in test difficulty may still exist between test forms. A psychometric procedure called equating, which puts student scores onto the previous year’s scale, makes adjustments for test difficulty so that students in one year are held to the same standards as students in another year.
Details about equating and scaling, for operational assessments; and information about test development and analyses of past-year test results are described in each of the following technical reports:
- Summative ELPAC Technical Report
- Summative Alternate ELPAC Technical Report
The annual technical reports are linked on the CDE Summative ELPAC web page and the CDE Alternate ELPAC web page as they become available.