Special preparation for tests has been a relatively contentious issue. The controversy has entailed (a) disagreement over the effectiveness of such preparation, (b) concern over unequal access to it, and (c) worries about its impact on the validity of test scores. This paper provides a brief history of ETS's involvement with, and contribution to,…

This paper addresses potentially problematic classroom episodes in which someone foregrounds a social division that is normally taken for granted. It illustrates the way in which linguistic ethnography can unpack the layered processes that collide in the breaking of silence, showing how linguistic form and practice, individual positioning, local…

Over the last several decades, suburban schools have become increasingly more diverse and now must respond to racial change, so that they can successfully educate an increasingly more diverse and multiracial student body. This article analyzes interview responses of administrators, teachers, and staff at 19 schools in six diversifying suburban…

Test takers' beliefs or experiences have been overlooked in most validation studies in language education. Meanwhile, a mutual exclusion has been observed in the literature, with little or no dialogue between validation studies and studies concerning the uses and consequences of testing. To help fill these research gaps, a group of Senior III…

Preparing at-risk youth and students with mild disabilities for state and district tests is important for improving their test performance, and basic instruction in test preparation can significantly improve student test performance. The article defines noncognitive variables that adversely affect test-taker performance. The article also describes…

This paper provides suggestions for preparing students to take the actuarial examination on financial mathematics, SOA/CAS Exam FM/2. It is based on current practices employed at Slippery Rock University, a small public liberal arts university. Detailed descriptions of our Theory of Interest course and subsequent Exam FM/2 prep course are provided…

Curriculum and its associated assessment are at the heart of educational systems worldwide. In light of perceived national educational stagnation or decline, as well as of performance in international league tables such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), countries have embarked on curriculum and assessment reforms. This is…

Many higher education students embark on a study of accounting under the misconception that accounting requires a high level of proficiency in manipulating data and being good with numbers, while believing that linguistic competence, especially as it relates to writing, is of less importance. This article reports on a study that examined 15…

This qualitative phenomenological research study used narrative inquiry to explore teachers' perceptions of their students' reading proficiency as demonstrated on the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System's reading test. Ten teachers participated in the study, and responses pertaining to their perceptions of reading instruction and…

The use of integrated skills tasks in language tests has been debated for many years and international English test developers such as Educational Testing Service (ETS) and Pearson Tests of English (PTE) already use such tests to assess English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' language proficiency. Empirical research has rarely investigated…

High stakes testing has been long established in the English school system. In this article, we seek to demonstrate how testing has become pivotal to securing the neo-liberal restructuring of schools, that commenced during the Thatcher era, and is reaching a critical point at the current time. Central to this project has been the need to assert…

This study investigated the effect of targeted test preparation, or coaching, on oral English as a second language test scores. The tests in question were the Basic English Skills Test Plus (BEST Plus), a scripted oral interview published by the Center for Applied Linguistics, and the Versant English Test (VET), a computer-administered and…

Drawn from surveys completed by 122 students enrolled in developmental math at four community colleges and from seven student focus groups with a total of 34 developmental math students at those same colleges, this research brief illuminates student experiences with and perspectives on the math assessment and placement process. Findings suggest…

In this paper college admissions are based on test scores and students can exert two types of effort: real learning and exam preparation. The former improves skills but the latter is more effective in raising test scores. In this setting the students with the lowest skills are no longer the ones with the lowest aptitude, but instead are the ones…

The purpose of this article is to describe the actuarial science program at our university and the development of a course to enhance students' problem solving skills while preparing them for Exam P/1 of the Society of Actuaries (SOA) and the Casualty Actuary Society (CAS). The Exam P/1 prep course, formally titled Mathematical Foundations of…