Standard Setting for Complex Performance Tasks

This special issue is based on an invited symposium entitled "Setting Performance Standards on Complex Performance Assessments: Three Methods, Preliminary Results, and an Analytic Critique." There has been a trend in measurement toward extension of fundamental concepts from the simple to the complex. This collection of articles represents early work on expansions in standard setting methodology from unidimensional scales to more complex, multidimensional measures.

As the field of measurement moves toward increasingly frequent administration of performance tests and other measures of complex behavior for decision making about individuals -- be it in elementary school settings or in licensure or certification settings -- the need to undertake sound practices for standard setting is essential. This issue reports on a first attempt to use both old and new methods for setting standards in the context of measuring complex performance. The setting in which these articles were developed was a pilot study attempting to set a cut score when judging the extent that a teacher's performance on five selected tasks constituted the performance sufficient to certify the teacher as a master teacher.