ABSTRACT

This chapter considers test security in the context of recent developments in accountability testing, particularly focused on assessments based on new and more rigorous content standards focusing on higher level skills, such as constructing an argument and critiquing and analysis. It focuses on the need for improving methods of preventing, detecting, and responding to test security violations in the context of next generation assessments and accountability whether such issues arise nefariously, intentionally, or somewhere in between. The chapter highlights critical test security issues facing educational agencies transitioning toward next generation assessments. It provides test security threats into categories of threats, categories of testing, and categories of sources of threats to assist in comprehensively describing threats and methods to address them. The chapter also provides a subjective rating of the effectiveness of the various actions in dealing with various threats to test security.