The authors contend that children benefit from play as a form of intervention and as a means of fostering their cognitive, social, and physical growth. They review several standardized instruments developed over the last fifty years to assess this benefit of play on child development. They identify twenty-one such play measures, the majority of…

Background: Published best-practice guidelines and standardized protocols for voice assessment recommend multidisciplinary evaluation utilizing a comprehensive range of clinical measures. Previous studies report variations in assessment practices when compared with these guidelines. Aims: To provide an up-to-date evaluation of current global…

The training of teachers is one of the most critical factors in improving the quality of teaching and assessment in the classroom. EFL teachers need to be literate in language assessment; this can be achieved through training. A total of 147 Junior High School EFL teachers was surveyed to identify their training needs in assessmen. Semi-structured…

Purpose: Standardized tests are one of the primary assessment tools used by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to diagnose child language impairment. Numerous child language tests are commercially available; however, it is unknown what factors lead clinicians to select particular tests to use in clinical practice. This study investigated whether…

Nine preschool and school-age language assessment tools found to have acceptable levels of identification accuracy were evaluated to determine their overall levels of psychometric validity for use in diagnosing the presence/absence of language impairment. Eleven specific criteria based on those initially devised by McCauley and Swisher (1984) were…

Examines the controversy surrounding the administration of the Metropolitan Achievement Test on reading and the subsequent recall of the results data by the chancellor of the New York City schools. (IRT)

The recommended procedure for achievement test selection is presented. Following a review of some fundamental definitions of statistical properties of achievement tests (validity, reliability, and norms), major considerations to be applied in selecting achievement tests are discussed. These considerations are: (1) the characteristics of the school…

The effects of students taking different levels of the same standardized achievement test were assessed by administering two levels of the same test to each student. The functional level of the test was taken by all students. The second level of testing was randomly assigned at the adjacent higher or lower level of the test. Functional level…

This publication is an outgrowth of the concern expressed by the National Council of Teachers of English regarding the nature, uses, and misuses of standardized tests, specifically the validity of the subject-matter content of standardized English tests and the relation of the overall purposes of a school's total English program to standardized…

This paper provides an overview of standardized tests and a summary of important psychometric and test construction properties that educators must consider when they make critical evaluations of standardized tests. Sections of the paper concern: (1) basic characteristics of standardized tests; (2) differences between norm-referenced and…

For the most part, standardized tests are verbal and presuppose that the test takers know the language, culture, and values of the test makers, who usually represent white, middle class language and values. The communication problems that minority groups face when taking standardized tests include phonological biases (especially when the tests are…

Teacher-selected test level resulted in: (1) most Educable Mentally Retarded students tested responding above chance levels on all subtests of the Metropolitan Achievement Test, (2) reliability coefficients comparable to those of the standardization sample, and (3) moderate to high positive point-biserial correlations for all subtest-level…

This publication is designed to help vocational evaluators wisely select and use tests within the context of the referral questions and the individualized evaluation plan. The first of two parts contains information on why tests are used in evaluation, problems with tests, and how to select tests. Part 2 contains a review of specific tests that…