This document discusses the scores of Albuquerque (New Mexico) Public Schools (APS) students on the American College Test (ACT) and the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) during the 1982-83 school year. Graphs, a map, and a question and answer format are used to report the information. Comparisons of average ACT scores and average SAT scores are drawn…

Standardized test scores (STS) should be used on a local level: (1) as one component of evaluation of a student, school, or district; (2) to draw as much interpretive meaning from a norm-referenced test (NRT) as their structure will support; (3) as a communication device with students, parents, the public, and professional staff; (4) to check…

This booklet addresses the role of testing in today's public education system, and presents a series of questions and answers which will be of particular interest to school board members, legislators, lawyers and journalists. These questions are grouped into two major categories: (1) test purposes and users; and (2) current testing issues. Current…

The study examined the ability of Kaufman's (1979) profile analysis procedure with the WISC-R (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised) to discriminate learning disabled (LD) from non-LD children. A discriminant analysis of data on 279 children resulted in low classification accuracy, suggesting limited diagnostic utility of Kaufman's…

Reviews literature on the use of content validity to establish the job-relatedness of assessment centers. Attempts to show that content validity requires more than the careful construction of stimulus materials, how these stimulus materials are presented to candidates and how responses to these stimuli are evaluated are also critical…

This step-by-step reference guide to the five key Millon personality inventories includes vital information about each of the tests, including information on psychometric characteristics, special populations, assets-limitations, reliability-validity, and interpretation. The tests are: the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory III (MCMI-III); the…

Guidance counselors are responsible for helping teachers, students, and parents understand as much as possible about the school's testing program and each student's performance. The purposes and uses of tests are important in the context of the student's future. (Author/CM)

The factorial structure of the California Achievement Test subtests appears to consist of only one common factor in each grade. This study indicates that there is considerable overlap among the subtests and that there is minimal support for the use of subtest scores as measures of independent constructs. (Author/PN)

It is argued that consequential validity is a concept worth considering. The solution to defining "validity" is not to narrow the concept, but to allow for the differential prediction provided by tests in different circumstances. Consequences of the uses and interpretations of test scores are central to their evaluation. (SLD)

The development and validation of professional development resource materials for teachers by the National Council on Measurement in Education and associated professional groups is described. The developed module contains a context-orienting vignette, instruction, practice exercises, hands-on experiences, small group topics, and homework problems.…

College students (n=186) completed the Career Development Inventory and Strong Interest Inventory (SII), viewed a video about SII interpretation, and completed follow-up tests. Attitudes toward career planning and exploration predicted how much and how well they used interest inventory results. Career choice readiness predicted neither…

Responds to five major articles by Duckworth, Goldman, Healy, Sampson, and Goodyear on issues pertaining to testing and assessment in counseling psychology. Notes that assessment of the person is incomplete unless it includes assessment of environment, and discusses the role of assessment in problem solving. (TE)

The unfulfilled promise of criterion-referenced measurement is that it would permit valid inferences about what a student could and could not do. To come closest to achieving all that criterion-referenced testing originally promised, tests of higher item density, with more items per amount of domain, are required. (SLD)

Three short forms of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R), developed in 1991, were cross-validated on 207 male and 133 female adolescent psychiatric inpatients and outpatients. Results show psychometric properties for the short forms that are comparable to those of the WAIS-R standardization sample. (SLD)

When item response data do not satisfy the unidimensionality assumption, multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) should be used to model the item-examinee interaction. This article presents and discusses MIRT analyses designed to give better insight into what individual items are measuring. (SLD)