The "high stakes" environment surrounding student performance on standardized achievement tests has pressured educators to improve test scores--in both appropriate and inappropriate ways. Convened to examine such testing practices, a National Council on Measurement in Education developed guidelines for managing ethical, instructional,…

A big problem with performance tests and standards is their specificity, or lack of generalizability. "Keeping no secrets" and "teaching to the test" for performance tasks and traditional tests are absolutely necessary if schools are to prepare students adequately to meet performance standards. This nontraditional approach…

Discusses appropriate ways to prepare students for performance assessments and proposes a list of six guidelines for teaching to performance assessments. The focus is on elementary and secondary education. It is believed that these guidelines will help balance the domain and sample problem. (SLD)

Test-taking skills and methods used to prepare students for taking an examination are independent of knowledge and skills in the content area being tested. Test-taking skills do not give students the correct answers, but do allow the student to concentrate on answering questions without being confused by the mechanics of the test. Students who…

Articles in this special section consider (1) flow in test taking (Craig Deville); (2) testwiseness (Thomas O'Neill); (3) test length (Benjamin Wright); (4) cross-language test equating (Richard W. Woodcock and Ana Munoz-Sandoval); (5) computer-assisted testing and testwiseness (Richard Gershon and Betty Bergstrom); and (6) Web-enhanced testing…

Study skills books sometimes give conflicting advice concerning whether or not students should change their initial responses to multiple-choice questions about which they are unsure. In contrast, answer-changing research consistently shows that the majority of answer changes are from wrong to right. Responses of 244 community college students to…

A discussion of testing in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction focuses on the gap between ESL students' test performance on the one hand and their own and teachers' assessments of their competence on the other. First, a number of issues, drawn from the literature, are examined briefly, including the appropriateness of current testing…

Brief explanations are presented of some of the different methods used to score multiple-choice tests; and some studies of partial information, guessing strategies, and test-taking behaviors are reviewed. Studies are grouped in three categories of effort to improve scoring: (1) those that require extra effort from the examinee to answer…

External assessments for accountability may be taking precedence over other educational assessment purposes and are beginning to direct teaching and learning in schools. Four common concerns include teaching to the tests, narrowing instructional focus and allowing tests to determine curricula, deemphasizing higher order thinking skills, and…

This paper responds to an article that criticizes S. A. Cohen's position on the application of instructional alignment to teaching test wiseness. The value and ethics of using certain types of norm-referenced tests are criticized, based on data for the Missouri Mastery Achievement Test. (TJH)

Based on findings of previous research, this project developed, implemented, and examined the effect of instructional materials and procedures designed to eliminate the influence on test scores of the following four factors: (1) differential levels of test-taking skills on the part of students; (2) student's lack of familiarity with and consequent…

Teaching to the test has significant undesirable effects. This practice skews scores and invalidates the test, promotes convergent thinking, promotes learning that may be obsolete, excludes the arts and extracurricular activities, promotes didactic instruction over discovery learning, involves only short-term memory, and excludes higher-order…

Despite educators' well-founded misgivings about standardized multiple-choice testing, this practice is firmly entrenched in American life. One of educators' major responsibilities is preparing students to make wise choices in school and the "real world." With college and career opportunities hinging on standardized test scores, schools are…

From a survey of Arizona teachers/administrators and observations in two elementary schools concerning the role of external testing, a typology of teacher orientation toward preparing students to take high-stakes achievement tests is identified. Eight categories of teachers' approaches are contrasted with meanings of test preparation held by other…

In recent years, a controversy has arisen about the advisability of allowing examinees to review their test items and possibly change answers. Arguments for and against allowing item review are discussed, and issues that a test designer should consider when designing a Computerized Adaptive Test (CAT) are identified. Most CATs do not allow…