ABSTRACT
The terms 'assessment', 'examination', 'test', and 'measurement' are treated as interchangeable in many discussions of education policy. Assessment, conceived broadly, is gathering information about what students know and can do for some educative purpose. Digital assessments can be integrated with instruction and tailored to individuals, anytime, anywhere. Assessments are being administered to populations of more diverse test-takers with regard to culture, language proficiency, instructional backgrounds, and differential abilities. This chapter discusses the nature and role of measurement in educational assessment. It aims to add understanding of the limitations, as well as the uses of familiar practices, call attention to known methods that improve over total-score practice, and point to extensions that support new forms of assessment. The chapter describes assessment practices as a particular kind of evidentiary-reasoning argument, with measurement models as a strand of the argument. It includes comments on the implications of the foregoing topics for a variety of uses of assessment in higher education.
