A pilot study was conducted on test item ambiguity in standardized tests. A group of second and third grade children were selected and given a random sample of items from four standardized test series. Items were drawn from the reading, science and social studies subtests and put together in a composite reading comprehension, science, and social…

In this study 6,942 items from two standardized achievement test batteries--the Stanford (Early School Achievement Battery, Achievement Battery, and Test of Academic Skills) and the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills--were analyzed. Focus was on determining: (1) the extent to which these test batteries included general cognitive operations (GCOs)…

A panel of expert referees from the Philadelphia school district categorized items from secondary-level standardized mathematics tests according to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) subobjectives for mathematics. The following tests were covered by the study: (1) California Achievement Tests (Levels 19 and 20); (2) Comprehensive…

Standardized achievement tests and instructional accomplishment inventories involve different methodologies and cannot be equated by using conventional psychometric methods. Instructional accomplishment inventories are descriptive, and are designed to reflect the scope, sequence, and skills and emphasis in a particular instructional program.…

The ability to correctly answer reading comprehension test items, without having read the accompanying reading passage, was compared for third grade learning disabled students and their peers from a regular classroom. In the first experiment, fourteen multiple choice items were selected from the Stanford Achievement Test. No reading passages were…