This is an imaginary first-person account of a 15-year-old Portuguese student who has spent a year and a half in an American high school. While conceding that the language barrier did prove difficult for him at first, the student says that language was not the overwhelming problem he expected it to be. He proceeds to explain six features of life…

Low income and middle income four- and five-year old children were shown stimuli in three forms: objects, colored pictures, and black and white line drawings taken from commonly used assessment instruments, and were asked to label the stimuli. Results indicated both groups of children labeled the objects more successfully than the pictures.…

Noting that the practitioner is confronted with conflicting definitions of "fairness" that claim to avoid "bias" in test usage, this article asserts that "mean fairness" can be achieved by use of multiple regression with the dichotomous variate, group membership, included as a predictor; mean fairness also holds for sub-groupings, based on test…

Responding to publicity about declining computation scores on standardized tests, the author conducted a study comparing October with May testing and timed with untimed tests. He concluded that students today are able to compute but do so more slowly than earlier students and earn higher scores on applications and concepts. (SD)

A study was conducted to explore the reliability and validity of three prominent procedures used in informal reading inventories (IRIs): (1) choosing a 95% word recognition accuracy standard for determining student instructional level, (2) arbitrarily selecting a passage to represent the difficulty level of a basal reader, and (3) employing…

Children's tendency to answer attitude questions in a biased manner, favoring latter response alternatives when two alternatives are presented in a forced-choice format, was investigated. Using a forced-choice interview format, children were asked questions concerning their attitudes toward mathematics. Each question contained two evaluative…

A seminar was offered to improve the understanding of tests as they are used in academic and employment decisions, and to assist participants in improving their scores on standardized tests through increased understanding of test-taking strategies. The long- and short-range implications of training students in the techniques of test-taking are…

In this program for college students the goal is to help students learn more efficiently and effectively. Designed primarily to aid the under-prepared student, the program attempts to fill in gaps in the student's background and help him or her learn those techniques that are necessary to college survival. A diagnostic survey is conducted with the…

The viewpoint is expressed that adding to test reliability by either selecting a more homogeneous set of items, restricting the range of item difficulty as closely as possible to the most efficient level, or increasing the number of items will not add to test validity and that there is considerable danger that efforts to increase reliability may…

Determination of the fairness of preschool tests for use with children of varying cultural backgrounds is the major objective of this study. The predictive validity of a battery of preschool tests, chosen to represent the core areas of preschool assessment, across race and sex, was evaluated. Validity of the battery was examined over a 12-month…

Intended for parents, this guide discusses the effects of standardized tests on children, using test items from recent standardized reading tests which have been administered to children aged 7 to 13 and children's responses to these items. For each item, comments are made about the ambiguity of the item; the various interpretations that can be…

The first portion of this paper discusses the procedure for placing freshmen in a remedial composition course at a small liberal arts college. The design of the basic skills test used for placement is criticized on the basis of the inappropriateness of both content and format (multiple choice) in determining which students required remedial…

SOURCES OF INFORMATION FOR RESPONSES TO MULTIPLE-CHOICE ITEMS ON READING COMPREHENSION TESTS AND THE EFFECTS OF CONTENT WORDS AND FUNCTION WORDS IN SUPPLYING INFORMATION FOR THE CORRECT COMPLETION OF MULTIPLE-CHOICE ITEMS WERE STUDIED IN AN EXPERIMENT AT CAMPBELL COLLEGE. PARAGRAPHS WITH ACCOMPANYING MULTIPLE-CHOICE ITEMS SAMPLED FROM READING…

Indices of appropriateness of a test for an individual are discussed, and two data sets are evaluated. With the first data set, three indices of test appropriateness are obtained for response patterns on achievement tests from an experimental study of the effects of test anxiety and time pressure with 173 3rd and 4th grade students. Relationships…

The focus of this paper is on improving the measurement of test anxiety. Background information is given about the role of motivation and the importance of testing. The present research is directed at developing a shorter, more reliable and valid measure of test anxiety, thus furthering the predictive, diagnostic, and test program uses of test…