In international large-scale assessments, students may not be compelled to answer every test item: a student can decide to skip a seemingly difficult item or may drop out before the end of the test is reached. The way these missing responses are treated will affect the estimation of the item difficulty and student ability, and ultimately affect…

Recent Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) analyses find that cyber charter schools in seventeen states show consistently low reading and mathematics value-added test scores compared to traditional public schools serving comparable students. This generally accords with prior research. We hypothesize that the relatively poor…

Errors in oral reading tests result from inaccuracies that tend to creep in because children are not totally consistent while taking a test and from inaccuracies caused when the examiner does not catch a word recognition error, giving credit for an answer that is more wrong than right or vice versa. Every test contains a standard error of…

Organized as a question-and-answer booklet, this parents' guide explains scores on standardized reading achievement tests. Examples illustrate the meaning of certain grade equivalent scores. The grade equivalent method is described as a poor way to report scores; raw scores, percentiles, and stanine ranges are discussed as alternatives. The…

The study reported in this paper examined whether a disproportionate number of boys and girls in a given grade level at various schools might have an inequitable effect on the mean achievement test scores of those schools. The student population of the Palm Beach County Schools, Florida, reflecting a cross-section of socio-economic backgrounds,…

This study investigated the effect of timed testing on developmental students' scores and developed data that might better reveal students' reading and testing behaviors. Three tests were administered to provide six variables, including the Cooperative English Test, Form 1A (Coop 1A); Cooperative English Test, Form 1B (Coop 1B); and Degrees of…

A study was conducted at Cuyahoga Community College to test the relationship between student scores on timed and untimed reading comprehension and vocabulary tests, and to investigate the relationship between those scores and intelligence. The study sample included 72 students enrolled in classes at developmental, freshman, and sophomore levels.…

Two major issues are addressed in this commentary on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading assessment: the design of the reading proficiency scale and interpretation of test data; and the dimensionality of this scale and the possibility of supplying data on specific skill dimensions. An examination of NAEP data and the…

Reading and mathematics tests of the New Jersey Minimum Basic Skills Tests were modified to accomodate handicapped students, in order to determine whether or not students would perform better on the modified test forms. Changes were made in the format of the test booklets, answer sheets, and administration instructions to accomodate the following…

The relationship between student scores on standardized achievement tests taken in the eighth grade and the Ohio Ninth Grade Proficiency Test (ONGPT) was studied to determine whether standardized achievement test cut-off scores can be used in place of the ONGPT. Students enrolled in the eighth grade in an urban school district in the spring of…

A series of three studies was conducted to determine the effects of testing time above or below the recommended time on results of standardized achievement tests with a sample across all three experiments of 1,219 fifth graders in 59 classrooms in Lansing, Michigan. The first two studies considered the effects of increased time; the third explored…

This study is the second in a series designed to explore the probable consequences of exceeding the prescribed time limits in the administration of standardized achievement tests. This study considered whether the test user could apply norms that accompany the test if departures were made from established time limits, and whether increased testing…

This report is the final one in a trilogy stemming from the 1968 Summer Reading Institute in the Washington Model School Division. The Institute was designed to meet the needs of elementary school teachers in their attempts to teach language skills and reading to students in grades K-3. This follow-up study examines the results of the Summer…

A procedure is demonstrated for constructing tables showing, for each score on a commercial reading achievement test, the percentage of real-world materials that the testee is likely to comprehend with at least a criterion level of proficiency, the percentages of students in a local or national sample who can competently comprehend a given…

This document is a study of standardized tests by sub-group, ranking the states according to scores divided (in turn) by gender, race and ethnicity, location of school, family income, parental education, teacher qualification and experience, limited English proficiency, special education participation rate, and per-pupil spending. The tests…