If tests are unreliable, they aren't of much use—to you or your students. This booklet, Reliability: What Is It and Is It Necessary?, takes a keen look at the three sanctioned ways of measuring a test’s reliability. You’ll also learn how to compute reliability indices for your own classroom tests—and whether you should.

The MASTERING ASSESSMENT series is a set of fifteen practical, easy-to-use booklets covering a wide range of topics related to educational assessment and accountability. These groundbreaking booklets put the most relevant information on assessment at teachers’ fingertips and provide an important resource for educators looking to learn the ins and outs of becoming “assessment literate.” Paired with the series' Facilitator's Guide (available for download at no additional charge from Pearson's Instructor Resource Center), Mastering Assessment is the perfect tool for building assessment literacy either in self-study or a professional development program.  

• Appropriate and Inappropriate Tests for Evaluating Schools

• Assessing Students’ Affect

• Assessing Students with Disabilities

• Assessment Bias: How to Banish It

• Classroom Evidence of Successful Teaching

• College Entrance Examinations: The SAT and the ACT

• Constructed-Response Tests: Building and Bettering

• How Testing Can Help Teaching

• Interpreting the Results of Large-Scale Assessments

• Portfolio Assessment and Performance Testing

• Reliability: What Is It and Is It Necessary?

• Selected-Response Tests: Building and Bettering

• The Role of Rubrics in Testing and Teaching

• Test Preparation: Sensible or Sordid?

• Validity: Assessment’s Cornerstone