To assess the impact of economic deprivation on students' reading scores in standardized tests, the vocabulary and reading comprehension portions of the California Achievement Test and the Degree of Reading Power test were admininstered to two groups of eighth grade students--60 students participating in the federal free lunch program and 60…

Suggestions for students, parents, and teachers on how to prepare students to take standardized tests are presented. The value of deliberate efforts to teach students test-taking skills is supported by research. Activities to prepare students include the following: (1) teachers should develop some of their tests and worksheets in formats similar…

Criticism of standardized tests is extensive, and a number of claims of test misuse have been made. Test misuse is discussed in six common circumstances. (1) Test users accept the title of a test as an accurate and complete description of the variable being measured, not having full knowledge of the test, its items, and the test manual. A…

A method for understanding and controlling the multiple facets of an oral examination (OE) or other judge-intermediated examination is presented and illustrated. This study focused on determining the extent to which the facets model (FM) analysis constructs meaningful variables for each facet of an OE involving protocols, examiners, and…

To revitalize humanities courses and to improve student thinking, a workshop for faculty members of the University of the Sacred Heart (Puerto Rico) will cover two models of collaborative learning, collaborative group work and peer criticism. In collaborative group work, students should be able to learn how to reach a consensus about a specific…

Standardized tests of writing ability have individual and shared limitations and deficiencies that should be acknowledged by test designers and users. Most institutions use the portions of standardized tests that test ability to proofread and edit, but they do not use the optional essay sections that actually require students to write. To assure…

The decline in Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores is a direct result of lower average performance on equating questions that are reused over a period of several years. Therefore, it is important to examine the content of representative questions, used over time, for possible obsolescence. Two panels, one concentrating on the verbal section of…

The hypothesis that the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) score decline is a result of changing American family sizes and configurations is explored. This possible explanation of declining SAT scores had been offered by Robert B. Zajonc in an article discussing the relation between family configuration and cognitive development. Since a number of…

This document contains the following manuscripts: "Effects of Alternate Scoring Options on the Classification of Entering Freshmen Writing Competencies," by Edys Quellmalz and Eva Baker; "Implications of Learning Research for Designing Competency Based Assessment," by Edys Quellmalz; "Effects of Alternative Discourse and…

Research on the quality of foreign medical graduates (FMG) in terms of their competence or manifest abilities as measured by examinations, and their performance or actual behavior is briefly reviewed. In addition, some of the methodological problems that make research on foreign medical graduates difficult to interpret are critiqued, and…

An ongoing series of experiments has extended Rose's information processing approach to job performance assessment. Each study investigated cognitive tasks from the literature on memory, psycholinquistics, and visual information processing, for potential inclusion in the test battery. Each task was then evaluated against three criterion areas: (1)…

Reflections on past and future uses of intelligence tests are presented. Three current approaches to intelligence tests are described: (1) neural efficiency, which relates the speed or quality of functioning of the neural system to test results; (2) information processing--cognitive micro-processes used in solving test items; and (3)…

Scores on the Prescriptive Reading Inventory, the California Achievement Tests, 1970 Edition, the the Short Form Tests of Academic Aptitude were obtained for black pupils and representative samples of pupils in grades 1-3. These scores were compared in an attempt to asses bias in the Prescriptive Reading Inventory, a criterion-referenced…

"Mainstreaming" is defined as a program whereby handicapped children are placed in regular classrooms for all or part of the school day, with steps taken to see that their special needs are satisfied within this arrangement. Key court decisions are cited because the implications of mainstreaming for contemporary education can be properly…

This volume of the "Disadvantaged Child" Series presents papers on all aspects of the compensatory education debate, written in large part by many of the educators who played leading roles in this program. Part I provides a comprehensive overall picture of the program. Part II discusses culture-fair testing, "Jensenism" and…