Title page
Contents
Section 1: Introduction 6
What is the value of reporting results below the content area level? 6
A new approach for estimating student achievement at the topic level 7
Section 2: TIMSS Grade 4 Mathematics Assessments 10
Items and their classification 10
Current reporting in TIMSS 11
Section 3: An Illustration of an IRT-Based Domain Scoring Approach for Estimating Topic-Level Achievement 12
Steps for estimating topic-level achievement 12
Results 15
Achievement profile of U.S. students in terms of topic-level performance 16
Section 4: Conclusion 17
Appendix A: Crosswalk Analysis 19
Appendix B: Topic Scores by Gender and Race/Ethnicity 22
References 24
Table 1. Number of TIMSS grade 4 mathematics items and score points used in this study, by content area, topic area, and TIMSS assessment year: TIMSS 2007 and 2011 11
Table 2. Linear transformation constants for the TIMSS 2011 fourth-grade mathematics assessment 12
Table 3. Computation of item weights for topic G1 (Points, Lines, and Angles): TIMSS 2007 and 2011 14
Table 4. Mean model-based topic score and model-based topic percent score for U.S. students, by content area and topic area: 2011 TIMSS mathematics assessment 17
Figure 1. Item difficulty parameter estimates, by topic area: 2007 and 2011 TIMSS mathematics item pool 16
Exhibits
Exhibit 1. Illustration of hierarchical structure for TIMSS 2015 grade 4 mathematics framework that specifies the subject's content areas and, for each content area, the topics that are covered 7
Table A-1. Number of TIMSS 2007 and 2011 grade 4 mathematics items classified into TIMSS 2015 framework by content area, topic area, and objective 20
Table B-1. Mean model-based topic score and model-based topic percent score for U.S. students, by gender, content area, and topic area: 2011 TIMSS mathematics assessment 22
Table B-2. Mean model-based topic percent score for U.S. students, by race/ethnicity, content area, and topic area: 2011 TIMSS mathematics assessment 23