The authors suggest that efforts to comply with the protection in evaluation procedures provisions of P.L. 94-142 (the Education for All Handicapped Children Act) have been characterized by attempts to identify a single fair test for use with specific groups of minority children, and that such efforts will not result in improved efforts to…

General guidelines exist for reporting and interpreting test scores, but there are short comings in the available technology, especially when applied to criterion-referenced tests. Concerns that have been expressed in the educational measurement literature address the uses of test scores, the manner of reporting scores, limited testing knowledge…

Much of the language and many constructs used in testing and assessment must be redefined in order for testing instruments to be valid for use with children of African-American descent. These children are products of unique linguistic environments. Current educational assessment tools are insensitive to the cultural-linguistic diversity of the…

Five statistical indices are developed and described which may be used for determining (1) when linear equating of two approximately parallel tests is adequate, and (2) whan a more complex method such as equipercentile equating must be used. The indices were based on: (1) similarity of cumulative score distributions; (2) shape of the raw-score to…

In recent years, the controversy surrounding testing has grown, and the charge of bias is the most often cited criticism of testing and assessment. A review of the literature indicates that psychometricians and other researchers speak of bias as a property of the test or of items in the test. Conversely, test critics speak of bias as a quality or…

Several methods of assessing test item bias are described, and the concept of fair use of tests is examined. A test item is biased if individuals of equal ability have different probabilities of attaining the item correct. The following seven general procedures used to examine test items for bias are summarized and discussed: (1) analysis of…

The uses and misuses of standardized test results used for program evaluation as seen by a staff member of an Elementary Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title I Technical Assistance Center are described. In ESEA Title I, test scores are used to select students for the program. Although federal requirements do not require using standardized test…

The authors examine existing procedures and instruments used to assess the motor and perceptual/motor skills of severely/multiply handicapped infants and young children. Following an introductory section is a discussion of the rationale for the sequencing of assessment items and the limitations of the instruments for yielding specific quantitative…

The scoring scheme of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is studied, as well as techniques for estimating its reliability. NAEP data are collected on students of age 13 in the fall, age 9 in the winter, and age 17 in the spring. The scoring task, involving hand scoring of open-ended items, may vary between 25,000 responses to…

This study examined the effects of pretraining Chicano and non-Chicano seventh-grade students using items parallel to those appearing on tests. The sample was 44% Chicano and 56% non-Chicano. Prior to instruction on factors and primes, all seventh-grade students in a school were given an Arithmetic Reasoning Test and a Missing Words Test as…

The cautions needed for correctly interpreting grade equivalent scores are presented simply, for persons who are not statisticians. Four potential limitations of grade equivalent scores are summarized. (1) Comparisons across grades are of little value when the subject content is not the same; for example, sixth grade American history is not…

People often perform poorly on tasks following experience with unsolvable problems. Two competing explanations for this performance deficit (learned helplessness and egotism) were tested. Subjects were given either solvable or unsolvable discrimination problems and then a series of anagrams which were alleged to be either highly or moderately…

A non-aversive modification of Bekesy Audiometric Procedures (BAP) used in assessing hearing ability has been found to produce interpretable audiograms from children whose responses to the unmodified BAP were erratic and uninterpretable. In an experiment with six 8-year-old children, three subjects were assigned to a condition in which a light cue…

Two studies investigated examiner scoring agreement on the Oral Vocabulary, Draw-A-Design, and Draw-A-Child subtests of the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities. In study one, ten examiners scored four randomly selected normal children's protocols. Unanimous agreement occurred on scores for 52% of the Oral Vocabulary responses, 39% of the…

Reviews of the Nelson-Denny Reading Test (N-D) for college students indicate that the test may not be appropriate for all college students. Although the N-D is easy to administer and score, some of its traits make it questionable for use in evaluating open admissions students: it is timed; it measures vocabulary, rate, and comprehension in a mere…