RAND collaborated with the researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara; the Far West Laboratory; and the California State Department of Education to develop and administer several science exercises to students in elementary, middle, and high schools in 1993 and 1994.

This hands-on performance task was administered in various combinations to samples of 5th graders in California during 1993 and 1994. The task was administered by project staff under controled conditions. Portable partitions were used so that students could not observe or otherwise interact with one another during the test sessions unless working in a group portion of the testing. Testing often occured in the cafeteria or other large room at the school so that each student had enough space to work with a task's equipment and materials.

Using the scoring guides provided, RAND was able to achieve a high degree of agreement between readers using these scoring guides. The mean correlation between two readers on a hands-on task ranged from 0.83 to 0.98. The mean was 0.95. The exceptionally high agreement probably stemmed from a combination of factors, including designing and testing the scoring rubrics in conjunction with task development, having several separately scored segments within each measure, the use of detailed semi-analytic scoring guide, reader selection and retention policies, and extensive reader training and supervision by project staff.

Incline was administered to a total number of 1,100 fifth grade students in 1993 for purposes of field testing, task development and refinement.