Test Development: Educator Involvement

As a Florida educator, you could be involved in one or more of the following test development activities:

Develop and validate competencies, skills, and blueprint. This work is based on matching competencies and skills to the Sunshine State Standards, surveys of content experts in Florida, and the activities completed by content experts. Content experts review the competencies and skills as well as information collected and recommend changes to bring them up-to-date. Then the competencies and skills are revised and incorporated into the blueprint, the document used to develop the certification examinations. Content experts review the blueprint and determine the weight that each of the competencies and skills should have on an examination. Once the competencies, skills, and blueprint are developed, they are sent out to a sample population for feedback. The validation committee will incorporate the feedback results into their review process.

Develop and validate test item specifications. Test item specifications are instructions to test developers for creating new items. Each specification is coded to the appropriate competency and skill it represents, describes the skill, and provides the context and content for the test item. A sample test item is included. Once the development process is complete, the test item specifications are validated.

Develop and validate test items. Subject matter experts use the blueprint and test item specifications to revise or develop test items. The test items are pilot-tested in secure settings around Florida. The test items and the results of the pilot tests are then presented to the validation committee for review. Once validated, the test items become part of the test bank and are field-tested on future certification examinations.

Revise test information guides. Once the test item development process is completed, the test information guides are updated to include the new information. The test information guide committee will provide input into the development of online versions of the test information guides.

Validate test forms. Once the banks are updated, new certification tests are drawn from these banks. A committee of content experts will review the tests and verify the answer keys.