The authors argue that personnel who select standardized achievement tests have been led to believe that the major achievement test batteries differ very little in terms of the topics they test; but that the content covered by these major tests is different, and that such differences have consequences for instructional content. To test this…

The effects of different choice formats on the reliability of teacher-made tests were examined for high and low achievers. The first study examined the effect of 3 and 5 choice items on the reliability of dichotomously scored teacher-made tests. The second study examined the effect of 3 and 4 choice items on the reliability of similarly designed…

Several standard measures of aptitude, interest, attitude, and personality are briefly described, including the General Aptitude Test Battery, the Clerical Skills Tests, other tests sponsored by the United States Employment Service; and the Strong Campbell Interest Inventory. This volume also reviews special assessment techniques for the severely…

This paper grew out of a presentation made as part of a panel discussion on the Bakke case, and is second in a series of Institute for the Study of Educational Policy documents on important educational issues and problems. Many of the factors that impact test performance or scores are examined. The primary thesis of the paper is that it is…

A recategorization system developed by Bannatyne to categorize subtest scatter from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) is used as an alternative to isolated analysis of each individual subtest. Reading disabled, learning disabled, and educable mentally handicapped students are categorized according to their performance…

Three basic areas of definition, measurement, and research, voiced as concerns by members of the National Council of Measurement in Education (NCME) to its Task Force on Measurement Problems in Competency-Based Programs, are used as an organizer for a sponsored symposia and the papers in this monograph. The problem of the definition of competency…

When a program evaluation is conducted on the basis of gains made in standardized achievement test scores between a pretest and a posttest, serious bias can result where a floor effect exists on one or both of the test levels. Based upon the expanded standard scores on the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills from three successive regular spring…

Presented in the annotated bibliography are approximately 50 citations (1974-1976) on nondiscriminatory testing of handicapped and culturally different students. Information is said to have been drawn from volume eight of Exceptional Child Education Resources. Entries are arranged by accession number and usually contain information on author,…

While most school districts believe they understand grade equivalent scores, teachers, parents, and measurement specialists frequently misinterpret this apparently simple statistical expression. Echternacht's article describes the construction, application, and interpretation of grade equivalent scores from the test publisher's perspective.…

The purpose of the present study is to examine the April, 1974 Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) for item-content bias between the sexes. By so doing, this study forms a logical extention of the work of Coffman (1961) on the '54 SAT, and Donlon (1973) on the '64 SAT. A study of item-sex bias was conducted using the method of delta-plots (Angoff,…

Although dealing broadly with issues involving program evaluation, this paper is especially concerned with large-scale evaluations of federally funded education programs that are national in scope and, to some extent at least, compensatory in nature. The paper concentrates on a few basic problem areas that seem inherent in the concept of…

The GED occupies a well earned position of strength as an accepted and reliable program of 30 years standing. Nearly 2.2 million civilians have passed the GED and 300,000 people in the United States are earning their high school diplomas each year by passing the GED at State-set levels. Although there will be new national norming and new forms of…

While debates over the heritability of IQ and the potential for culture bias in measuring instruments have generated much research and public comment, it is also possible to investigate the significance of interracial differences in mean IQ by ignoring both the foregoing issues and instead examining the social psychology of the test situation…

The second volume of the Commission on Tests' report contains the briefs submitted by individual members for the consideration of the full Commission. These briefs, which argued for 46 proposed recommendations, formed the basis for the recommendations made in the first volume. Each brief is accompanied by a record of the endorsements, comments,…

To determine the long-run impact of the CERLI training program, the trainees' abilities to function as Specialists in Continuing Education (SCE) had to be measured and assessed. This assessment is a followup to "Assessment of the CERLI Training Program Specialist in Continuing Education" (EA 002 706). The document reports on attempts to…