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MATHCAT: A Flexible Testing System in Mathematics Education for Adults

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Elements of Adaptive Testing

Abstract

One of the mathematics courses in adult basic education in the Netherlands is offered at three different levels. The majority of the students are foreign and, due to a large variation in background, most of their educational histories are unknown or can be determined only unreliably. In the program’s intake procedure, a placement test is used to assign students to a course level. As the students’ abilities vary widely, the paper-and-pencil placement test currently used has the two-stage format described in Lord (1971). In the first stage, all examinees take a routing test of 15 items with an average difficulty matching the average proficiency in the population of students. Depending on their scores on the routing test, the examinees then take one of the three follow-up tests. Each follow-up test consists of 10 items.

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Verschoor, A.J., Straetmans, G.J.J.M. (2009). MATHCAT: A Flexible Testing System in Mathematics Education for Adults. In: van der Linden, W., Glas, C. (eds) Elements of Adaptive Testing. Statistics for Social and Behavioral Sciences. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-85461-8_7

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