ABSTRACT

Cutscores are called standards by many authors. I will use the term cutscores in this chapter to avoid confusion with the meaning of standards as the word appears in the publication Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (American Educational Research Association (AERA), American Psychological Association (APA), & National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), 1999), or with the meaning of standards as the word appears in statements of educational goals describing what students should know and be able to do. (I had previously preferred the term passing scores, but cutscores are now commonly used to divide test takers into more than passing and failing categories.)

OVERVIEW The purpose of this chapter is to describe how the setting of cutscores on tests has changed in the last 20 or so years. To establish an appropriate context for the review of changes since about 1980, I briefly discuss a few of the relevant highlights of earlier work in setting cutscores, with a primary focus on the development of the generally accepted methods in use by the early 1980s. (For a detailed review of the history of setting cutscores, see Zieky, 1995.) The view of the past demonstrates that some unresolved problems in setting cutscores have existed for thousands of years.