This article is a commentary on McGill et al.'s (2020) article "Use of Translated and Adapted Versions of the WISC-V: Caveat Emptor." McGill et al. use caveat emptor in their title to indicate that the buyer of an assessment must be careful about the product being purchased, presumably because the seller of the assessment is not being…

Ultimately, measures in research, testing, assessment and evaluation are used, or have implications, for ranking, intervention, feedback, decision-making or policy purposes. Explicit recognition of this fact brings the often-ignored and sometimes maligned concept of consequences to the fore. Given that measures have personal and social…

Reviews the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children, an individually administered test of intelligence and achievement. Finds it to be of high overall quality. (FL)

The emphasis placed on test scores in college admissions is discussed. The need for colleges to periodically analyze and define their admissions policy is recommended. (Author/AL)

Describes a dozen ways in which reading tests are at variance in their demands with the demands of reading as it occurs in everyday life. Suggests that these sources of variance render reading tests considerably less valid as measures of real world reading behavior than most people want to believe. (RS)

It is suggested that error of measurement cannot be routinely incorporated into the "error term" in statistical tests, and that the reliability of test scores does not have the simple relationship to statistical inference that one might expect. (Author/GK)

The author traces reasons to support his contention that the state of the art in assessing learning disabled students is not good. Among issues examined are the following: use of tests for purposes other than those for which they were intended; technical adequacy of currently used tests (standardization, reliability, validity); the use of deficit…

Reviews the articles in this issue of "School Psychology Quarterly" and briefly compares their methods for identifying profile patterns. Argues that subtest profile patterns on the existing generation of intelligence tests have modest reliability and weak relationships with achievement and diagnostic categorizations. (Contains 13…

Three areas of concern related to test bias and validity should be considered during the revision of the Standards for Educational and Psychological Tests. The first area concerns the sources and consequences of test bias. Five sources of bias have been identified: numerical bias, role bias, status bias, stereotypic bias, and familiarity bias. The…

Makes certain observations relating to the use of general-impression marking as a partial determinant of admission to tertiary educational institutions in Western Australia. (HOD)

Major presumptions that underlie the use of early intelligence tests are presented and disputed, centering on the construct of early intelligence, reliability, prediction, standardized administration, professional acceptability, utility for decision making, and congruence with Public Law 99-457. Professional solidarity is urged in opposing the…

Assessment reforms might fail because high stakes will be attached to them too soon, judgments will be unreliable, and lawsuits will occur. Educators need to consider technical issues including score reliability, task validity, portfolio sampling, and generalizability problems. U.S. schools would improve considerably if national Advanced Placement…

Attention is drawn to the ways in which current conceptions of intelligence and its measurement differ from those which were generally accepted in 1928. The following principles underlying intelligence testing were generally agreed upon in 1928: (1) the assumption of intelligence as a recognizable attribute, responsible for differences among…

The implications of standardized testing for minority students are explored. Test terminology is described in terms of objectivity, standardization, reliability, and validity. Primarily, however, the paper reviews the objectivity of standardized testing, that is, of those tests which are either norm-referenced or criterion-referenced. The use of…

Lists the dangers of readability formulas and concludes that while they may be a necessary evil, they should not be used as the underlying structure of a reading program. (FL)