Placement exams are high-stakes assessments that determine many students' college trajectories. More than half of entering students at community colleges are placed into developmental education in at least one subject, based primarily on scores from these assessments, yet recent research fails to find evidence that placement into remediation…

Validation research for educational achievement tests is often limited to an examination of intended test score interpretations. This article calls for an expansion of validation research in three dimensions. First, validation must attend to actual test use and its consequences, not just score meaning. Second, validation must attend to unintended…

Placement exams are high-stakes assessments that determine many students' college trajectories. More than half of entering students at community colleges are placed into developmental education in at least one subject, based primarily on scores from these assessments, yet recent research fails to find evidence that placement into remediation…

At a community college in Hawaii, two separate validation processes were carried out in order to install a new student placement test, each serving a different purpose at different times in the installation process. Decision Theory was used to arrive at a decision tool to allow for compromises between accuracy and enrollment management. The…

This paper discusses some of the problems posed by external testing, including the social and racial complexities and the serious intellectual issues raised by the nature of a "standardized" examination. It is argued that these and other problems are likely to intensify to an unprecedented degree during the next several years as a result of…

Prior to 1979, DeKalb Community College (DCC) developed placement levels from Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores as criteria for admissions to degree-granting programs. When this procedure proved inadequate for degree admissions and student placement, DCC began generating placement levels on the basis of the Reading, English, and Mathematics…

This Digest overviews legal challenges in five areas of test use for decision-making in schools: ability tracking, placement in special education classes, test scores as college admissions criteria, test disclosure, and teacher competency testing. Cases illustrating these challenges are described and include: Hobson v. Hansen (1967), Moses v.…

Study focused on the problems of curricular misalignment with placement tests used in community colleges. Findings indicate that while pre-test and post-test scores were highly aligned, there was little or no relationship between placement test scores and student performance in class, or between test content and skills emphasized in class. (PGS)

A study evaluated different approaches to placing students in adult literacy classes using 168 adult basic education (ABE) and General Educational Development (GED) students. Students in classes at Rochambeau School in White Plains, New York, were given the Tests of Adult Basic Education (TABE), the Tests of Adult Literacy Skills (TALS), an oral…

Two tests of oral English ability are described and presented: (1) the Oral Placement Test, and (2) the Oral Production Test, which contains three forms for three levels. The tests may be used for placement or diagnosis. Each student is tested individually; the placement test takes five minutes, and each achievement test takes less than ten…

Annotations of twenty English placement tests are presented, providing for each a general description, information on content, publication of results, diagnostic capabilities, and predictability. Tests are arranged in three categories: (1) standardized English placement tests, including The College English Placement Test, Comparative Guidance and…

This pamphlet outlines an attempt to provide an instrument by which the linguistic background of Welsh children can be measured. In a group of Welsh-speaking children there are different degrees of Welshness, and it is essential, for educational purposes, that the degrees of Welsh linguistic background be estimated. The two versions of the Welsh…

A study compared the performance of 44 applicants seeking admission to an alternative high school (n=19) and nursing assistant program (n=25) at a Wisconsin postsecondary institution on the Assessment of Student Skills for Entry Transfer (ASSET) test and the Nelson-Denny Reading Test. (Applicants who did not achieve a minimum score on ASSET then…

The migrant lifestyle, in which a student moves to a new school nearly three times per year, destroys the continuity of educational programs and contributes to abnormally high dropout rates. Educational testing can help improve educational continuity for migrant students by yielding valuable information about their levels of skills mastery so they…

Philosophical, technical, and practical considerations in selecting and evaluating educational tests for exceptional children are discussed. The following major technical considerations are addressed: validity, reliability, sensitivity, appropriateness, objectivity, and feasibility. (SEW)