This review critiques the highly-praised and influential 2001 study, "Getting Tough? The Impact of High School Graduation Exams," which concluded that "minimum competency," or high school "graduation exams," had no effect on student achievement. The review compares the test classifications of "Getting…

The Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills, Form U, is scored in two ways: number-correct and pattern. The latter makes use of the information about which particular items are answered correctly, giving more weight to the more discriminating items and making allowances for guessing. Critics have suggested that black students are penalized by pattern…

This paper examines long-range problems caused by test-controlled schooling. It looks at the demands of both curricular and accountability uses of tests from the point of view of the urban school district's testing office. On the basis of interviews with 12 New Orleans teachers and the experiences of the authors in working in two large city…

Standardized test results are skewed by family socioeconomic status. Until top-down, corporate-style testing is eliminated, genuine reforms like cooperative learning and multi-age classrooms will be doomed. Citizens should learn about local tests, talk to neighbors, speak out at school board meetings, write legislators, and challenge proponents to…

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…

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…

It is unsafe to estimate achievement test norms for fall testing by linear interpolation between norms for the previous spring testing and norms for the following spring. Second grade students were tested in reading and arithmetic in the fall and in the spring to provide pre-test and post-test data for evaluation of academic growth. Three…

An assessment of the Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) City-Wide Testing Program is presented to determine the effects of using customized achievement tests to achieve multiple purposes. The tests are derived from, or related to, the tests in a nationally standardized test battery, but include items written specifically to measure the local curriculum.…

American school officials almost invariably compare local and national achievement through one of the following norm-referenced tests: (1) the California Achievement Test; (2) the Stanford Achievement Test; (3) the Metropolitan Achievement Test; (4) the Science Research Associates Test; (5) the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills; and (6) the Iowa…

Describes a system employed by a middle school to improve performance scores on the Comprehensive Testing of Basic Skills (CTBS), through aggressive attitude changes, to ensure fiscal and other benefits. Notes characteristics of the approach, including realistic goals, student involvement, student responsibility, community involvement, student…