Heavy migration into Canada and migration from Native rural communities to urban areas has made it necessary to identify appropriate instruments for assessing minority children's academic abilities. In Canada, IQ tests have been used extensively for academic placement in school. This paper reviews the literature evaluating cultural bias in IQ…

The roles of assessment and testing within public employment and training programs supported by the Job Training Partnership Act of 1982 (JTPA) were examined through a review of the literature and two surveys of the JTPA system. In 1987, the Center for Remediation Design and the Center for Human Resources (CHS) at Brandeis University in Waltham…

Questions on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) with the largest score differences between women and men of all racial and ethnic groups were identified. Patterns of difficulty that would explain the SAT's continuing underprediction of female first-year college performance were studied. An item analysis of one form of the June 1986 SAT for 1,112…

This study compared the different modes of evaluation at work in Greece's secondary school graduation and university admission process. The goals of the study were (1) to provide background information regarding the contribution of in-school assessment scores and external examination scores to higher education admissions decisions, and (2) to…

Issues in preparing a review form to detect item bias in tests are discussed and the first draft of an item bias review form is presented. While stereotyping is the consistent representation of a given group in a particular light, bias is the presence of some characteristic of an item that results in differential performance of two individuals of…

The cultural bias of the Adult Performance Level Assessment, Form AA-l (APLA) was examined. The potential influence of cultural differences on scores of a major ethnic group, Acadians or Cajuns, was investigated. Assessment items most prone to produce differences in scores were isolated and administered to selected groups. No significant…

Current testing and selection practices in schools and the workplace are examined to describe the experiences of handicapped people and to determine the extent to which testing is a barrier to the full participation of handicapped people in society. The Panel on Testing of Handicapped People dealt in depth with the legal and psychometric issues…

A case study of the Florida Teacher Certification Examination (FTCE) program was described to assist others launching the development of large scale item banks. FTCE has four subtests: Mathematics, Reading, Writing, and Professional Education. Rasch calibrated item banks have been developed for all subtests except Writing. The methods used to…

The CIRCO project is a large scale effort to design a series of diagnostic instruments, based on the CIRCUS tests, for Spanish-speaking children in preschool, kindergarten, and first grade classrooms in the United States. The goal is to develop measures with the following characteristics: (1) is suitable for use with Spanish-speaking children from…

This speech deals with the assumptions and approaches underlying educational assessment and suggests alternatives to standardized testing. It is proposed that the assumption that test items can be standardized is at the base of assessment problems; while there are standard mental functions which children develop, there are no standard items that…

It is suggested that bias--when associated with a predictor, a test, or a statistical estimator--is not always bad, in spite of the immediate negative response evoked by the word, bias. Four settings are described to illustrate situations in which a procedure should not be summarily rejected due to bias: (1) educational researchers rejected the…

Major speeches presented at the conference on human and civil rights in education are summarized. Issues discussed at the conference include: the extent to which standardized testing infringes on the rights of students and educators; the existing uses of educational testing in public schools; and ways to eliminate misuses of tests by educators,…

Six current issues in the use of tests are examined in this paper. Are the tests used in education valid? In general and to a reasonably satisfactory extent they are. Is the emphasis these tests place on cognitive achievements a serious limitation? Because of the basic and pervasive role of cognition in human affairs, and in the absence of any…

The measurement difficulties of experiential learning arise because assessment is often individualized, off-campus learning experiences are not well structured or defined and paper-and-pencil tests are often inappropriate measurement devices. The assessment process requires quality control to assure that it can accurately indicate whether learning…

Contents of this book include the following collection of articles: "Assessing Minority Group Children: Challenges for School Psychologists," Thomas Oakland; "The NEA Testing Moratorium," Boyd Bosma; "Cultural Myopia: The Need for a Corrective Lens," Martin H. Gerry; "Assumptions Underlying Psychological Testing," T. Ernest Newland;…