Th e Bookmark Standard Setting Procedure

Th e Bookmark Standard Setting Procedure (BSSP; Lewis, Green, Mitzel, Baum, & Patz, 1998; Lewis, Mitzel, & Green, 1996; Mitzel, Lewis, Patz, & Green, 2000) is an item response theorybased item mapping procedure developed in 1996 in response to the need for a robust standard setting procedure to support the burgeoning standards-referenced testing paradigm. At the time the BSSP was introduced, the Angoff (1971) procedure was the most commonly used standard setting method. Since its inception, the BSSP has become widely used across the United States. A majority of states have implemented the BSSP to set cut scores on one or more statewide assessment programs, and the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) used an extension of the BSSP (MapMark, Schulz & Mitzel, 2009) to set cut scores for the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Th e BSSP has been used internationally in Peru, Belgium, Bermuda, Qatar, South Korea, and most recently in Israel to set cut scores on national Reading assessments.