Examines the controversy surrounding the administration of the Metropolitan Achievement Test on reading and the subsequent recall of the results data by the chancellor of the New York City schools. (IRT)

The effects of students taking different levels of the same standardized achievement test were assessed by administering two levels of the same test to each student. The functional level of the test was taken by all students. The second level of testing was randomly assigned at the adjacent higher or lower level of the test. Functional level…

Teacher-selected test level resulted in: (1) most Educable Mentally Retarded students tested responding above chance levels on all subtests of the Metropolitan Achievement Test, (2) reliability coefficients comparable to those of the standardization sample, and (3) moderate to high positive point-biserial correlations for all subtest-level…

The authors argue that personnel who select standardized achievement tests have been led to believe that the major achievement test batteries differ very little in terms of the topics they test; but that the content covered by these major tests is different, and that such differences have consequences for instructional content. To test this…