The ubiquitous use of standardized test results to make varied judgments about educators, students, and schools within the public school system raises concerns of validity. If the test results have not been validated for making multiple determinations, then the decisions made about educators, students, schools, and school districts based on the…

Trying to understand PISA is analogous to the parable of the blind men and the elephant. There are many facets of the PISA program, and thus many ways to both applaud and critique this ambitious international program of assessment that has gained enormous importance in the crafting of contemporary educational policy. One of the facets discussed in…

With the increasing amount of testing taking place in classrooms, teachers may question how appropriate those assessments are for the growing numbers of English language learners (ELLs) in the United States. One of the assessment options for classroom teachers is the informal reading inventory (IRI), which is the most frequently used assessment…

The 2014 Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card is the Mackinac Center's second effort to measure high school performance. The first high school assessment was published in 2012, followed by the Center's 2013 elementary and middle school report card, which used a similar methodology to evaluate school performance. The…

Political perspectives on the advisability of state achievement comparisons have changed substantially over the last half-century. As Selden (2004) noted regarding the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), "[w]hen it began in the 1960s, NAEP specifically was designed "not" to provide comparisons among states. This was…

In this study we use data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey third- and fifth-grade samples to investigate teacher judgments of student achievement, the extent to which they offer a similar picture of student mathematics achievement compared to standardized test scores, and whether classroom assessment practices moderate the relationship…

Purpose: To review the content and psychometric characteristics of 6 published tests currently available to aid in the study, diagnosis, and treatment of motor speech disorders in children. Method: We compared the content of the 6 tests and critically evaluated the degree to which important psychometric characteristics support the tests' use for…

When test data from different sources conflict, the truth is often found somewhere in the middle. As this article shows, reports of achievement trends can be heavily influenced by the particular definition of achievement represented and by testing conditions. Recent progress in science and mathematics must be carefully nurtured in the nineties.…

A study correlating Nelson-Denny Reading Test scores with American College Testing Program Assessments (ACT) indicates that reading skill can be predicted accurately from the ACT social studies reading and English usage subtests. (MSE)

Five new test batteries are reviewed: California Achievement Tests, Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, Metropolitan Achievement Tests, SRA Achievement Series, and Sequential Tests of Educational Progress. The review covers six basic areas: test administration, norming, test scores, reporting and interpretation, aptitude test considerations, and general…

Principal components analysis of standardization sample data for the Comprehensive Test of Adaptive Behavior, involving 6,647 persons with mental retardation, found that a single factor accounted for 86 percent of the variance in category scores. Use of the Total Score and idiographic item clusters is psychometrically preferable to use of category…

Information on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, a major revision of the Vineland Social Maturity Scale, covers authors, publisher, prices, copyright dates and revisions, groups for whom the instrument is intended, forms, purpose and recommended use, dimensions measured, administration, data summation, score interpretation, test…

A method is proposed for providing an absolute, in contrast to comparative, evaluation of how well two tests are equated by transforming their raw scores into a particular common scale. The method is direct, not requiring creation of a standard for comparison; expresses its results in scaled rather than raw scores, and allows examination of the…

Issues emerging from a look at student achievement, which is defined in its usual school context as achievement on standardized tests, are addressed. A mythology about standardized testing has developed, in part because the metaphoric languages of medicine and business have been applied to education, defining it in terms of cure, efficiency, and…

The second approach used by L. V. Hedges and L. Friedman (1993) in their reanalysis of Feingold's earlier results is conceptually equivalent and yields results consistent with the original interpretation. The first method yields results that are discrepant. Analyses of variations in tail effect sizes are planned. (SLD)