West Virginia Educational Standards Test (WESTTEST)

This customized, criterion referenced test aligned to West Virginia's Content Standards and Objectives (CSOs) is designed specifically for West Virginia students in grades 3 - 8, and 10 and includes three types of test items for students: selected response (multiple choice), short answer, and constructed response. West Virginia Educational Standards Test (WESTTEST) has 5 constructed response items for each of the subject areas assessed. In grades 3 - 8 there will be 20 total constructed response items (five constructed response questions for each subject area assessed). In grade 10 there will be 15 total constructed response items (five constructed response questions for each subject area assessed). Constructed response items are used many times in a classroom where a teacher asks for an explanation of an answer or for work to be shown. The students’ responses to this type of informal assessment are scored as being: superior, adequate or needing work depending upon the completeness and thoroughness of the response. Whenever an assessment situation calls for more than just a short answer, the response is scored with a scoring guide customized for that situation. The scoring guide is a formal evaluation scale which assigns a number which represents the completeness and thoroughness of the response. West Virginia Educational Standards Test (WESTTEST) will be replaced with the WESTEST 2 in 2009. Field tests for WESTEST 2 are currently being administered.

The Assistance will include:

Chapter 3: Method Section

• Research question clarification
• Develop testable hypotheses
• Select appropriate statistical tests
• Sample size determination
• Power analysis

Chapter 4: Results Section

• Collect, Enter, Code, and Clean Data
• Statistical analysis
• Write Results
• Explain Statistics
• Dissertation Editing
• Use of SPSS, SAS, LISREL, AMOS, package