Reviews previous six papers concerning fairness in employment testing. Contends that papers focus narrowly on legal, theoretical, and societal issues and provide little new information. Argues that industrial psychologists and governmental lawyers are retreating into rigidly defined positions and that the future will be marked by long, costly, and…

Actual and theoretical cases are presented in which the Battelle Developmental Inventory was used in infant assessment. Age-related discontinuities reveal that, for children whose chronological age abuts one of the cut-off points between age categories, radically different summary scores can be obtained from one day to the next despite identical…

Parents of gifted children are urged to understand that there are many different kinds of intelligence and ability tests; tests are designed for different purposes; all tests involve a certain amount of error; and tests only sample one aspect of a child's performance. (DB)

This article examines the myths and realities surrounding grading for gifted students, drawing on educational research and anecdotal experience. It contends that current grading systems tend to lack psychometric validity and reliability, that schools should embrace national standards, and that higher order thinking skills should be emphasized in…

Describes culturally competent assessment practice as a context for discussing advantages and disadvantages of various "corrections" currently available for the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory with Hispanic populations. Corrections include moderator variables, special scales, special norms, translations, and aids to…

Essay tests are easily constructed, relatively valid assessments of higher cognitive processes but are harder to score reliably. Teachers using essay tests are advised to follow clearly designed objectives, construct all-inclusive, pilot-tested questions, develop a checklist of specific scoring points and a model answer for each question, and use…

Understanding the effects of testing on students is critically important in the face of an inexorable movement toward a national testing program. Proponents thus far have stressed only the positive effects; neither the harmful effects on low-achieving students nor the program's costs and benefits have been appropriately discussed. This article…

Describes a dozen ways in which reading tests are at variance in their demands with the demands of reading as it occurs in everyday life. Suggests that these sources of variance render reading tests considerably less valid as measures of real world reading behavior than most people want to believe. (RS)

Reviews the role of statistical hypothesis testing in research, discusses the problems with multiple t tests, indicates when they are a problem, and suggests a compromise solution. (one reference) (JL)

Unstated reasons for the trend toward alternative assessment include mismatch between teachers' student-centered orientation and depersonalization of traditional testing; teachers' desire to exercise professional judgment; and the feeling that traditional tests are redundant and do not reflect the entirety of classroom learning. (SK)

This study investigated the generality of the negative suggestion effect in objective tests. College students read text passages and took objective tests. Later, they rated statements' validity, including statements from the initial test. Students were more likely to consider objectively false statements true if they had appeared on the earlier…

Former California Governor Pete Wilson's "social promotion" package, requiring districts to adopt new promotion policies based on state-mandated test results, is misguided. All retention or promotion decisions should be supported by multiple forms of evidence. Test scores should be buttressed by other information, such as grades and…

Examines three elementary teachers' conceptions about mathematics assessment in the context of their practice. Teachers' beliefs are shaped by externally defined functions and purposes of assessment; what teachers perceive as the official school curriculum and their position with regard to subject matter; and how they understand learning and…

Developed a scale for detecting random responses on the Multidimensional Pain Inventory using 95 undergraduates, 34 chronic pain patients, and 115 health-care professionals. A variable response scale was developed that discriminated accurately between valid and random profiles in two cross-validation samples, predicting random profiles with 90%…

Describes a "mistake" on the newly developed Illinois State Achievement Test for Third Grade reading comprehension involving the substitution of illustrations of a White family for the African-American family members in a story. Tells the story of how a group of third-graders discovered the mistake and the reactions and events which took…