Introduction
Quality assurance is an essential component of all types of assessment. In the case of large-scale student assessment, education stakeholders (e.g., educators, parents/guardians, students, school and school system administrators) depend on accurate, reliable, valid, and timely data/information about student performance. Stakeholders must have confidence in the data, because it is used for the purposes of accountability (to indicate how the education system is performing) and for improvement (data is used to: identify students’ needs, enhance instruction, establish and implement targeted interventions, and generally help students to strive toward attaining high levels of academic achievement).
Gaps in quality assurance may result in questions being raised about the quality and integrity of the data/information, and this may undermine efforts to use the data for both accountability and improvement. In Canada and the United States, provinces and states have policies in place that are meant to ensure consistent administration of assessments in accordance with ministry/department guidelines and to mitigate the risk of irregularities in test administration. Many jurisdictions, however, lack sufficient quality assurance processes.
Quality Assurance Processes
In addition to providing instructions in assessment administration and accommodations guides, jurisdictions should consider introducing systematic quality assurance processes including, but not limited to the following:
- Test Development (paper-based/technology-enhanced)
- Test Administration (paper-based/e-assessment)
- Quality Assurance School Monitoring
- Monitoring of Scoring/Marking Procedures
- Database Monitoring (collusion analysis)
- Data Processing and Data Integrity
- Standard Setting
- Reporting Procedures
Our Services
The Quality Assurance Lab, a collaboration of RMJ Assessment and Consultation MEP Consulting Inc. (http://www.consultationmepconsulting.com), delivers best-in-class quality assurance services. Knowledgeable and experienced in best practices, this team offers jurisdictions/organizations auditing services to assess the adequacy of existing processes and can design, develop, and implement quality assurance plans related to any/all of the quality assurance processes listed above.
In order to maintain the highest possible standards, we conduct ongoing research on documented best practices and ensure quality assurance approaches comply with widely recognized standards, such as those presented in:
- Principles for Fair Student Assessment Practices for Education in Canada (Joint Advisory Committee, Centre for Research in Applied Measurement and Evaluation, University of Alberta, 1993);
- Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, and National Council on Measurement in Education, 2014);
- The Program Evaluation Standards: A Guide for Evaluators and Evaluation Users (Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation, 2011); and
- Guiding Principles for Evaluators (American Evaluation Association, 2018).
In addition, the team’s approach to delivering services is informed by International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001 codes and standards for quality management systems requirements.
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