Laboratory courses serve as important gateways to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. One of the challenges in assessing laboratory learning is to conduct meaningful and standardized practical exams, especially for large multisection laboratory courses. Laboratory practical exams in life sciences courses are frequently…

Three major points covered by this report are (1) What are the demands for reading assessment and how have the demands increased?; (2) How adequately do present standardized reading tests meet these demands?; and (3) What possible approaches exist for developing assessment procedures which meet these demands? An extreme interest in finding out how…

A key part of President Bush's America 2000 strategy for achieving national education goals involves developing national standards for five core subjects and a new voluntary nationwide examination system. The New Standards Project envisions a new generation of student assessments that require performance tasks instead of "multiple guess"…

The term, standardized achievement test, has evolved to imply a broad package of materials which includes a wide array of norms, lists of scoring services and educational objectives tested, and aids to interpretation. Test authors are convinced that that individual differences in achievement do exist; that recognition of these differences will…

The implications of "A Nation at Risk" for the field of measurement are examined. These are a need for more frequent and varied tests; responsibility for eliminating measurement problems; and a resurgence of standardized testing at the high school level. The need for measures of teaching quality will increase. (DWH)

The first of eight related documents, this booklet is part of a series of papers presented at the 1978 National Right to Read Conference examining issues and problems in literacy. In its examination of standardized reading competency tests, the booklet first offers a definition of the kind of test it will consider and the criteria the test must…

Equating studies using item response theory (IRT) are reviewed. The most well-known papers, as well as a sampling of lesser-known studies, are included. Accompanying tables list the papers and classify them according to the test used, models used, test length and type, sample size and type, method of assessment, equating design, and kinds of…

Discussions of "test curriculum overlap" that focus on the term "mismatch" tend to be based on several untenable premises. This paper addresses the issue of the degree to which standardized tests should reflect the specific content of a given school curriculum with regard to three points: (1) The idea of matching the content of…

Discusses (1) perspectives from which standardized test developers, users, and interpreters must consider test results; (2) test components that affect student test performance; (3) test abuses that contribute to the shortening of tests; and (4) how educators can effect a change in the increased reliance on standardized tests. (HTH)

The Stanford-Binet IV is compared to the original version and criticized for having less power to measure the high end of intelligence and for having norms that discriminate against gifted students. Strengths of the Stanford-Binet L-M are pointed out, and use of both scales for different purposes is recommended. (JDD)

Improved communication and cooperation between test publishers and school systems is essential for solving major test problems. Test-curriculum matching, test equating, and inappropriate use of grade equivalent scores are major problem areas. The degree to which a standardized test yields information relevant to what the system is trying to teach…

The history and development of city-wide testing programs in Chicago since 1936 are reviewed and placed in context with the impact on testing of Sputnik and the passage of the National Defense Education Act of 1958. Current testing problems include the time lag between events and curricular changes and new test construction, the time lag between…

This research examines the effects of test format on achievement-test performances of Black children. Multiple-choice test items containing distractors (e.g., all correct, all incorrect) penalize Black children, since distractors appear to serve as blocking agents. The results also suggest that distractors encourage guessing. (Author/DOW)