FIGURE 1. Using Multiple Measures for Education Decisions
Three Ways to Combine Multiple Measures
Three Ways to Define
Multiple Measures
Measures of
different constructs
Different measures
of the same construct
Multiple opportuni-
ties to pass
the same test
Conjunctive
Student or school must
pass all measures.
In Virginia, school accreditation
ratings are based on students
meeting achievement standards on tests in English,
history/social science, mathematics, and science (with
possible adjustments for ELL
and transfer students and for
preparing students for retakes
of the state tests).
An elementary school reading
teacher requires a student to
pass a reading comprehension
test on at least two stories at
the same reading level before
allowing the student to read
stories at the next higher
reading level.
In Louisiana, students who
have met all graduation
requirements except passing
the graduate exit exam may
continue to retake it—even
after completing grade 12—
until they pass.
Compensatory
Higher performance on one
measure can compensate for
lower performance on another.
U.S. News and World Report
compiles a list of “America’s
Best High Schools.” One of its
criteria involves computing a
college-readiness index as a
weighted average of advanced
placement/International
Baccalaureate participation rates
and AP/IB performance quality.
For a student’s standards-
based report card grade, under
“Measures length to the
nearest inch and/or
centimeter, ” a teacher averages
results from two quizzes
and two performance
assessments.
A science teacher allows a
student to retake a test that
he or she failed after a unit on
ecosystems and uses the
average of the two test scores
in the student’s grade.
Complementary
Passing any one of several
multiple measures suffices.
The NCLB “safe harbor” provision means a school can meet
its adequate yearly progress
target if all subgroups meet
the target percentage scoring
proficient (achievement) or if
the percentage of students
who score below the proficient
level in a subgroup decreases
by 10 percent from the
previous year (improvement).
A teacher allows students to
choose whether they will write
a term paper or do a class
presentation to show their
understanding of Roosevelt’s
New Deal.
In Washington State, students
in the class of 2013 will have
to pass a mathematics test to
graduate from high school.
They may choose either the
math portion of the state test
or an Algebra I or Geometry
end-of-course exam.
the student can read and performed
poorly on one assessment for some
other reason (perhaps an inability to
connect with the stories or items on
one particular test, or spatial difficulties
that make it difficult to fill in bubble
sheets efficiently), then additional
measures will probably pick up his or
her true capability.
Multiple opportunities to pass the same
test may seem like an odd definition to
include in the list. Nevertheless, in prac-
tice, this is sometimes called “multiple
measures.” For example, most states
with graduation tests build in multiple
opportunities for students to take
the test.
How Are the Multiple Measures
Combined?
Methods of combining information from
multiple measures include ( 1) conjunctive, in which the student or group must
pass all measures; ( 2) compensatory, in
which higher performance on one
measure can compensate for lower
performance on another; and
( 3) complementary, in which the
student or group must achieve the
standard on just one of the multiple
measures (Chester, 2005).
Most teachers’ classroom grading
policies are compensatory: They
summarize students’ scores on several
achievement measures, usually either
by calculating an average or by
