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Standardized testing is:
in theory: a tool to ensure that student knowledge and aptitude in a given subject are examined with the same criteria across different schools.
in practice: a test used across schools, mostly composed of multiple-choice and true-false quizzes, and short-answer or essay writing requirements which are assigned a score by people other than the student's teacher.
Standardized testing is any test that is used across a variety of schools or other situations. Designers of such tests must specify a discrete correct answer for every question. This type of test includes both achievement (which measures knowledge already known) and aptitude (which attempts to predict future performance or potential) tests given to grade-school students, the British GCSEs, and the American SATs. The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) (Welsh: Tystysgrif Gyffredin Addysg Uwchradd (TGAU)) is the name of a set of British qualifications, taken by secondary school students at age 14–16 in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. ...
The SAT (pronounced S-A-T) Reasoning Test, formerly called the Scholastic Aptitude Test and Scholastic Assessment Test, is a type of standardized test frequently used by colleges and universities in the United States to aid in the selection of incoming students. ...
Overview
Standardized tests generally include at least some multiple-choice and true-false questions. These can be graded by computer, or by humans who do not understand the material in depth, as long as they have a list of the correct answers. One potential defect in such tests is that the test-taker can accidentally skip a line and then be marked wrong on material to which he or she knew the correct answer.
Standardized tests often include written portions as well; these are graded by humans who use rubrics, or guidelines, as to what a good essay on the subject will be. In the classroom, a rubric is a set of criteria and standards (linked to learning objectives) that is used to grade a student assessment (paper, project, essay, etc). ...
Some believe that standardized tests make it possible to compare the achievements of students from different schools, eliminating bias from grade inflation and the influence of schools' reputations on university admissions officers. Others contend that standardized tests reinforce bias in education because students whose families have access to enrichment opportunities do better on such tests than students from other parts of a society. Such tests, as objective as they try to be, are tools of culture and are rooted in whatever cultural or philosophical understanding gave them rise. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...
Western Illinois University A university is an institution of higher education and of research, which grants academic degrees at all levels (bachelor, master, and doctorate) in a variety of subjects. ...
Standardized tests only generate useful information if each question generates a ratio of correct to incorrect answers. So if nearly all test-takers get an answer correct, the test question needs to be eliminated from the test. Similarly, if nearly all test-takers get a particular question incorrect, the test question needs to be eliminated. Standardized objective tests create some meaning by comparing correct responses to incorrect ones.
Most frequently, tests are administered to people of similar ages or grades at particular times in development. This practice allows researchers to study correct to incorrect response ratios for 3rd graders (for example) over time or from region to region. The wide array of test-takers in a particular group generates data to establish normative classification for a group. Those data can serve as a guide for what that particular test finds as a normative response for that test. For that reason, many standardized tests are also called "norm referenced."
Most standardized tests are achievement tests and therefore have little predictive value for students, teachers or schools. They only generate good data for narrow skill sets or topics. However, many school systems use standardized testing as a screening tool, as a basis for curriculum or as a broad comparison between students. Standardized tests have limited value and need to be regarded as only one way to measure performance, potential or intelligence.
Originally a standardized test was simply a standard test – of academic achievement or of knowledge in a specific academic or vocational domain. It has since acquired the meaning of a written test whose scores are interpreted by reference to the scores of a norm group which has taken the test and which is usually considered to be representative of the population which takes the test. For example, standardized tests of academic achievement provide conversion tables showing the percentile ranks in the norm group of all possible raw scores. Some standardized tests are now analyzed with item response theory. In education, certification, counselling, and many other fields, a test or an exam (short for examination) is a tool or technique intended to measure students expression of knowledge, skills and/or abilities. ...
The word norm coming from the latin word norma which means angle measure or (lawlike) rule, has a number of meanings: A social or sociological norm; see norm (sociology). ...
The percentile rank of a score is the percentage of scores in its frequency distribution which are lower. ...
In statistics and data analysis, a raw score is an original datum that has not been transformed – for example, the original result obtained by a student on a test (i. ...
Item response theory (IRT) is a body of related psychometric theory that provides a foundation for scaling persons and items based on responses to assessment items. ...
History of standardized tests The earliest evidence of standardized testing based on merit comes from China during the Han dynasty. The concept of a state ruled by men of ability and virtue was an outgrowth of Confucian philosophy. The imperial examinations covered the so-called Six Arts which included music, archery and horsemanship, arithmetic, writing and knowledge of the rituals and ceremonies of both public and private parts. Later, the five studies were added to the testing (military strategies, civil law, revenue and taxation, agriculture and geography). The imperial examinations (Chinese: 科舉; Pinyin: kējǔ) in dynastic China determined positions in the civil service based on merit and education, which promoted upward mobility among the population for centuries. ...
In the United States ...
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1914 (MCMXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday. ...
1918 (MCMXVIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. ...
The SAT (pronounced S-A-T) Reasoning Test, formerly called the Scholastic Aptitude Test and Scholastic Assessment Test, is a type of standardized test frequently used by colleges and universities in the United States to aid in the selection of incoming students. ...
1926 (MCMXXVI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ...
The Educational Testing Service (or ETS) is the worlds largest private educational testing and measurement organization, operating on an annual budget of approximately $900 million. ...
1948 (MCMXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1948 calendar). ...
President Lyndon B. Johnson enacted the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965. ...
1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal. // Events January Bill Clinton January 1 : North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) goes into effect. ...
This is a partial list of notable United States federal legislation. ...
Signing ceremony at Hamilton High School in Hamilton, Ohio. ...
2001: A Space Odyssey. ...
Criticisms of standardized tests Standardized tests are widely used in education, placement and certification. Their validity has been criticized on several grounds. In psychometrics a valid measure is one which is measuring what it is supposed to measure. ...
Some of the criticisms are standard psychometric ones. For example, scores on tests of achievement in mathematics problem-solving are often correlated with scores on tests of language ability; this suggests that the mathematics test is actually measuring the linguistic ability required to understand the presentation of the problems rather than the mathematical ability required to solve them. Educational tests also tend to become outdated as curriculum changes. For information regarding the parapsychology phenomenon of distance knowledge, see psychometry. ...
Standardized tests are also widely criticized as culturally inappropriate for many groups, both in content and in process. Criticism of content usually centers on the differing relevance of the content to people from different cultures – for example, newly arrived immigrants can be expected to have greater difficulty with an intelligence test which asks them to name past leaders of the country to which they have recently immigrated.
Attempts have been made to develop culture-free and culture-fair (culture-neutral) tests of intelligence, but on the whole these attempts have not been successful. Conceptions of intelligence vary widely from culture to culture, and abstracting the few common elements, or what appear to be the few common elements, cannot be depended on to produce a reliable guide to intelligence.
A common criticism of standardized testing programs in schools is that they encourage teachers to "teach to the test." That is, teachers concentrate on the parts of the curriculum they know will be covered on the test and neglect those that will not. This criticism is certainly worth considering if teachers have foreknowledge of the test and the test is not comprehensive. However, if enough alternative forms of the test are provided, if teachers do not know which form will be used, and if the forms provide a comprehensive sampling of the curriculum, this danger would probably be avoided. Despite the obvious danger of teaching to the test in certain circumstances, though, little research has investigated the prevalence of the phenomenon, or its effects. Furthermore, any form of testing will promote teaching to the test if the consequences of testing are serious and the material on the test is known beforehand.
A related criticism is that students whose teachers train them in test-taking skills unrelated to content will perform better than equally accomplished students whose teachers do not. Some simple test-taking skills can improve scores on multiple-choice standardized tests, so this criticism points to a real danger, especially if standardized tests are used (incorrectly) as the sole measures of achievement or skill. However, little research has investigated the prevalence or effects of this training.
Standardized tests are also criticized for emphasizing recall and recognition rather than higher-order cognitive skills. However, this criticism is not generally valid. While many standardized tests do emphasize recall and recognition, many others assess analytical skills.
Another criticism is that standardized tests assess inadequate samples of skills. Again, however, this criticism cannot validly be made of all standardized tests, although it can be made about the majority of tests of any type.
Not without importance is the correlation between standardized test performance and social class and/or degree of wealth. Those who can afford to take often expensive secondary test prep courses designed especially to teach one how to take the test can enjoy a huge advantage over those who cannot afford such courses, which reflects resources available to the student, and not necessarily academic merit. Social class refers to the hierarchical distinctions between individuals or groups in societies or cultures. ...
Wealth derives from the old English word weal, which meant well-being or welfare. The term was originally an adjective to describe the possession of such qualities. ...
Large-scale attempts have been made to substitute performance assessment or "authentic" testing for standardized academic testing. Performance tests require actual performance of a skill; for example, instead of answering questions about a science experiment, a student would be required to perform it. However, performance tests have poor reliability simply because they accumulate so little data. Standardized tests have been found to predict scores on performance tests better than other performance tests do. In psychometrics reliability is the accuracy of the scores of a measure. ...
Much of the opposition to standardized tests has centred on the incorrect use of these tests. In particular, the use of standardized tests of academic achievement to assess individual students is questionable, given the tests' reliability – they are simply not accurate enough to provide adequate assessments of individual students by themselves.
Perhaps the most important criticism of standardized testing is that many standardized tests fail to meet the standards of their own field. For example, tests of adult literacy are widely used, although there is little evidence that they assess literacy accurately. World literacy rates by country The traditional definition of Literacy is the ability to use language ie to read, write, listen and speak. ...
In Britain the political impact of standarized testing in recent years has been that it has been used to criticise the performance of individual schools and the teaching profession. It is bound up with national, centralised, inspection and appraisal.
Advantages of standardized tests Perhaps the sopfidgoifdoifdooooooooop. While some people may systematically score lower on certain tests, these differences will be systematic. On the opposite end of the spectrum, scores on subjective tests change significantly according to whoever is grading them. In the case of college admissions, for example, interviews with prospective students have been repeatedly shown to predict later college performance no better than chance, while statistical measures such as prior GPA or SAT scores are much more accurate. The initials GPA can refer, among other things, to Grade Point Average; see Grade (education) Guinness Peat Aviation General Practice Australia, a private, independent medical accreditation society Greyhound Pets of America This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
One of the main advantages of standardized testing is that it is able to provide assessments that are psychometrically valid and reliable, as well as results which are generalizable and replicable. In psychometrics a valid measure is one which is measuring what it is supposed to measure. ...
In psychometrics reliability is the accuracy of the scores of a measure. ...
Another advantage is aggregation. A well designed standardized test provides an assessment of an individual's mastery of a domain of knowledge or skill which at some level of aggregation will provide useful information. That is, while individual assessments may not be accurate enough for practical purposes, the mean scores of classes, schools, branches of a company, or other groups may well provide useful information because of the reduction of error accomplished by increasing the sample size.
While standardized tests are often criticized as unfair, the psychometric standards applied in the development of standardized tests would produce fairer testing if applied in other types of testing. In particular, the effectiveness of each test item in accomplishing the goal of the test would have to be demonstrated.
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Standards of quality The considerations of validity and reliability typically are viewed as essential elements for determining the quality of any standardized test. However, professional and practitioner associations frequently have placed these concerns within broader contexts when developing standards and making overall judgments about the quality of any standardized test as a whole within a given context. This article discusses validity in logic, for the term in the social sciences see validity (psychometric). ...
The mathematical foundations of statistical reliability are probability and statistics. ...
Quality refers to the distinctive characteristics or properties of a person, object, process or other thing. ...
A standards organization, also referred to as standards development organization or SDO, is any entity whose primary activities are developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, reissuing, interpreting, or otherwise maintaining standards that address the interests of a wide base of users outside the standards development organization. ...
Testing standards In the field of psychometrics, the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing [1] place standards about validity and reliability, along with errors of measurement and related considerations under the general topic of test construction, evaluation and documentation. The second major topic covers standards related to fairness in testing, including fairness in testing and test use, the rights and responsibilities of test takers, testing individuals of diverse linguistic backgrounds, and testing individuals with disabilities. The third and final major topic covers standards related to testing applications, including the responsibilities of test users, psychological testing and assessment, educational testing and assessment, testing in employment and credentialing, plus testing in program evaluation and public policy. For information regarding the parapsychology phenomenon of distance knowledge, see psychometry. ...
The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing is a set of testing standards developed jointly by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), American Psychological Association (APA), and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). ...
Various meters Measurement is the process of estimating the ratio of a magnitude of a quantity to a unit of the same type. ...
Lady Justice - allegory of Justice as woman with sword and with book - statue at court building. ...
A right is the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled or a thing to which one has a just claim. ...
The word responsibility means the obligation to answer for actions. ...
Diversity is the presence of a wide range of variation in the qualities or attributes under discussion. ...
A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ...
To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...
Psychological testing is a field characterized by the use of small samples of behavior in order to infer larger generalizations about a given individual. ...
In education, certification, counselling, and many other fields, a test or an exam (short for examination) is a tool or technique intended to measure students expression of knowledge, skills and/or abilities. ...
Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. ...
A professional certification, trade certification, or professional designation often called simply certification or qualification is a designation earned by a person to certify that he is qualified to perform a job. ...
Program evaluation is essentially a set of philosophies and techniques to determine if a program works. It is a practice field that has emerged, particularly in the USA, as a disciplined way of assessing the merit, value, and worth of projects and programs. ...
Standardized testing is used as a public policy strategy to establish stronger accountability measures for public education. ...
Evaluation standards In the field of evaluation, and in particular educational evaluation, the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation [2] has published three sets of standards for evaluations. The Personnel Evaluation Standards [3] was published in 1988, The Program Evaluation Standards (2nd edition) [4] was published in 1994, and The Student Evaluation Standards [5] was published in 2003. Evaluation is the systematic determination of merit, worth, and significance of something or someone. ...
By evaluating the information above I have found out that there are many ways of developing tourism in the world and how tourism industry works and its background about tourism. ...
The Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation is a coalition of major professional associations formed in 1975 to help improve the quality of evaluation. ...
Each publication presents and elaborates a set of standards for use in a variety of educational settings. The standards provide guidelines for designing, implementing, assessing and improving the identified form of evaluation. Each of the standards has been placed in one of four fundamental categories to promote educational evaluations that are proper, useful, feasible, and accurate. In these sets of standards, validity and reliability considerations are covered under the accuracy topic. For example, the student accuracy standards help ensure that student evaluations will provide sound, accurate, and credible information about student learning and performance.
Notes - ^ The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing
- ^ Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation
- ^ Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation. (1988). The Personnel Evaluation Standards: How to Assess Systems for Evaluating Educators. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
- ^ Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation. (1994). The Program Evaluation Standards, 2nd Edition. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
- ^ Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation. (2003). The Student Evaluation Standards: How to Improve Evaluations of Students. Newbury Park, CA: Corwin Press.
References - Levitt, Steven D. (2005). Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything. William Morrow. ISBN 0-060-73132X., for information about teachers cheating on their student's standardized tests.
The cover of this version of Freakonomics has a picture of what looks like an apple on the outside but is really an orange. ...
See also In the education industry, alternative assessment or portfolio assessment is in direct contrast to what is known as performance evaluation, traditional assessment, or summative assessment. ...
A test is said to be criterion-referenced when provision is made for translating the test score into a statement about the behavior to be expected of a person with that score. ...
This is a list of standardized tests that students may have to take for admissions to various schools: // Secondary School Admissions ISEE - Independent School Entrance Examination SSAT - Secondary School Admission Test Eleven plus - For entry to grammar schools in the UK PSLE - Entrance test into Secondary Schools for Singapore Mid...
A test is said to be norm-referenced when the translated score tells where the person stands in some population of persons who have taken the test. ...
Standardized testing is used as a public policy strategy to establish stronger accountability measures for public education. ...
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