The Danish National Tests – A Practical Guide

In 2010, the Danish National Tests were implemented in the public compulsory schools as a mean of evaluating the performance of the public school system. The extensive test program consists of ten mandatory tests in six subjects in grades 2 through 8. In this paper, we share our insights from working with the first four rounds of the test data. We provide a brief introduction to adaptive testing, the available data and general data issues including missing data, test participation and data transformations. Additionally, we construct a standardized measure of the raw pupil ability estimate within each test and argue that this is often a more feasible measure for data analyses compared to the transformed test score presented to pupils and teachers. We provide the reader with preliminary analyses of the relation between pupils’ national test results and a wide range of pupil background characteristics as well as pupils’ 9th grade examination marks. We document a stable test score gap across grade levels and socio economic background and discuss the prospects of the national test data for future research.