Writing assessment can be used for a variety of purposes, both inside the classroom and outside: supporting student learning, assigning a grade, placing students in appropriate courses, allowing them to exit a course or sequence of courses, certifying proficiency, and evaluating programs. Given the high-stakes nature of many of these assessment…

This commentary provides an external perspective on NASP's first public report on racial and ethnic differences in Praxis outcomes. These data demonstrate racial disparities in pass rates but do not provide information regarding the causes of these disparities. This report underscores the need for expanded public reporting of Praxis data in order…

This interview provides a panoramic view of Antony's research interests, which includes his language-related experiences of early life, his study at UCLA, the PhD dissertation research he conducted under Lyle Bachman's supervision, and his idea of fairness. Given the specific context in which the interview was conducted, the interviewer approached…

This commentary argues that the OET research raises inescapable contradictions in trying to separate "language" from "communication" within a weak performance test and advocates for reconceptualizing the legitimate domain of "language" more widely, reclaiming the full potential of the communicative competence…

Whenever a major intelligence or achievement test is revised, there is always renewed interest in the underlying structure of the test as well as a renewed interest in the scoring, administration, and interpretation changes. In this interview, Amy Gabel discusses the most recent revision of the "Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fifth…

This is the College Board's response to a research article by Drs. Maria Veronica Santelices and Mark Wilson in the Harvard Educational Review, entitled "Unfair Treatment? The Case of Freedle, the SAT, and the Standardization Approach to Differential Item Functioning" (see EJ930622).

Students, teachers, administrators, community members, and policymakers are collectively responsible for ensuring that the literacy learning required to earn a living and lead a well-rounded life is available to all. To meet that responsibility, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) urges legislators to practice civil discourse by…

In an article based on her presentation to the 114th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Janet Helms described a concept of test fairness. Helms's approach to fairness appears to be based on the premise that socialization consists of experiences received from one's environment, which are simply internalized as personal…

In the past decade, major attention has been given to the power of tests and to the pivotal roles tests play in societies in shaping the definitions of language, affecting learning and teaching, and maintaining and creating social class. Accordingly, the quality of tests is not judged merely by their psychometric traits but also in relation to…

What is "fairness" in the context of educational assessment? I apply this question to a number of contemporary educational assessment practices and policies. My approach to philosophy of education owes much to Wittgenstein. A commentary set apart from the main body of the paper focuses on my style of philosophising. Wittgenstein teaches us to…

One purpose of a college education is to create active and engaged citizens and future leaders. If everyone wants students who have the potential to become such people, it is necessary to keep in mind the skills involved in good citizenship and positive leadership when evaluating applicants. Many of the leaders who have gotten the world into its…

Current efforts to reduce bias in assessment and placement of children with special needs has included the development of new testing procedures, use of adaptive behavior scales, use of criterion referenced measures, and interpretation of test results using local or special group norms. (SBH)

A cross-cultural counseling model has five stages: emergence of career and vocational problems, help-seeking and use of career services, evaluation of problems, career interventions and outcomes. The model addresses recognition and removal of cultural barriers to help-seeking and culturally appropriate methods of diagnosis, assessment, and…

Cross-cultural issues in personality and career assessment include ethnocentrism; the concept of culture; whether personality is culturally constructed; and linguistic, conceptual, scale, and normative equivalencies of assessment instruments across cultures. Research should include broader cultural pools, and counseling must take a cross-cultural…

Presents a discussion of the importance, advantages, and disadvantages of culture-fair and culture-specific tests and evaluation tools related to occupational therapy. (JOW)