This report describes the process of developing and validating the enhanced ACT. The report describes the changes made to the test content and the processes by which these design decisions were implemented. The authors describe how they shared the overall scope of the enhancements, including the initial blueprints, with external expert panels,…

The past thirty years have seen a rapid expansion of testing, exposing students worldwide to tests that are now, more than ever, standardized and linked to high-stakes outcomes. The use of testing as a policy tool has been legitimized within international educational development to measure education quality in the vast majority of countries…

For more than seventy-five years, standardized tests have been considered a vital tool for gauging students' readiness for college. However, few people--including students, parents, teachers, and policy makers--understand how tests like the SAT or ACT are used in admissions decisions. Once touted as the best way to compare students from diverse…

This edited volume brings together 10 cutting-edge empirical studies on the realities of English language learning, teaching and testing in a wide range of global contexts where English is an additional language. It covers three themes: learners' development of interactional competence, the organization of teaching and testing practices, and…

The Guidelines for Good Practice of the European Association for Language Testing and Assessment (EALTA) stress the importance of collaboration between all parties involved in the process of developing instruments, activities and programmes for testing and assessment. Collaboration is considered to be as important as validity and reliability,…

This volume examines the assessment of higher order thinking skills from the perspectives of applied cognitive psychology and measurement theory. The volume considers a variety of higher order thinking skills, including problem solving, critical thinking, argumentation, decision making, creativity, metacognition, and self-regulation. Fourteen…

The field of intelligence testing has been revolutionized by Alan S. Kaufman. He developed the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) with David Wechsler, and his best-selling book, Intelligent Testing with the WISC-R, introduced the phrase "intelligent testing." Kaufman, with his wife, Nadeen, then created his own…

Four research papers on the evaluation of the Utah State Department of Employment Security's (USES's) General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) for the deaf are presented. The studies were conducted by the test research staff of the Employment Security Commission of North Carolina from 1970 to 1979. The studies contain not only the analyses on which…

Of the 15 substantive papers in this report, 12 focus on the use of the Kent Infant Development (KID) Scale with severely handicapped children. The KID Scale measures 252 behaviors usually developed during the first year of life in five domains (cognitive, motor, language, self-help, and social). It was successfully adapted to elicit reliable…

This book addresses some of the important considerations surrounding the use of tests and assessment procedures when applied to students who are culturally, linguistically, and/or socioeconomically different from mainstream North Americans. Chapter 1 introduces the problems of using standards based on a white Anglo-Saxon perspective to assess and…

This collection contains four papers that were presented as part of a short course delivered at the 1991 annual meeting of the Speech Communication Association. The papers discuss various aspects of the development and use of "The Competent Speaker," a public speaking assessment instrument designed for the college sophomore level. The papers and…

This inaugural volume of our Spotlight Series features recent "Harvard Education Letter" articles on testing and new reports never before published on this important topic. Contributors address such issues as how educators can manage the "avalanche" of tests; whether the benefits of high-stakes tests justify the risks to…

"Educational Measurement" has been the bible in its field since the first edition was published by ACE in 1951. The importance of this fourth edition of "Educational Measurement" is to extensively update and extend the topics treated in the previous three editions. As such, the fourth edition documents progress in the field and…

Papers from the conference on language testing include: "Foundations and Directions for a New Decade of Language Testing" (Carol Chapelle, Dan Douglas); "A Comparison of the Abilities Measured by the Cambridge and Educational Testing Service EFL Test Batteries" (Lyle F. Bachman, Fred Davidson, John Foulkes); "Judgments in…

A selection of essays on language testing includes: "Perspectives on the Testing Cycle: Setting the Scene" (Catherine Elder, Gillian Wigglesworth); "The Politicisation of English: The Case of the STEP Test and the Chinese Students" (Lesleyanne Hawthorne); "Developing Language Tests for Specific Populations" (Rosemary…