Standard Setting in Denmark: Challenges Through Computer-Based Adaptive Testing

Abstract

The objective of this chapter is twofold: (1) to provide an overview of standard settings in the Danish school system and (2) to guide the reader through the history of standard setting in a Danish context. This includes periods when Denmark provided education without using the formal standard setting approaches we use today, where standard setting involves more than creating limits or cut points in various distributions measuring student achievement. The Danish school system has recently started making actual use of several traditional methods of determining the minimum pass mark for an exam, which opens the possibility for students to move on to a higher educational level, similar to the transfer from compulsory lower secondary to general upper secondary education. This chapter will introduce the former practice, in a time when there was no formal standard setting, up to the current situation, focussing in particular on the introduction of adaptive computerized systems based on the psychometrics used by PISA and IEA. This new form of endeavour forms a sophisticated use of standard setting. This highly complex use of assessment systems takes advantage of the Rasch model terminology that has been applied as part of Danish national tests (NTs). This assessment system secures scalability of students both horizontally, across students within the same grade level, and vertically, across students at different grade levels. To find this system being implemented across an entire educational system, is unique. The chapter explains how this system developed with a particular focus on the Danish NT.