Standardized Testing

Democracy is a highly desirable but contested concept in education. However, little is known about how current and future educators perceive, experience and relate to democracy, which could have a significant impact on how students learn about, and become involved in, civic engagement and democracy. This paper reports on a study of 129 College of Education students, finding that they generally have a narrow conceptualization of democracy, primarily focused on electoral politics, only weakly connecting it to education. Social justice, in particular, was highlighted as requiring more attention.

In their book EVALUATING CRITICAL THINKING Stephen Norris and Robert Ennis say: “Although it is tempting to think that certain [unstated] assumptions are logically necessary for an argument or position, they are not. So do not ask for them.” Numerous writers of introductory logic texts as well as various highly visible standardized tests (e.g., the LSAT and GRE) presume that the Norris/Ennis view is wrong; the presumption is that many arguments have (unstated) necessary assumptions and that readers and test takers can reasonably be expected to identify such assumptions. This paper proposes and defends criteria for determining necessary assumptions of arguments. Both theoretical and empirical considerations are brought to bear.

Current preservice teachers have been educated solely in the era of NCLB, amidst high-stakes testing and accountability mandates. What happens when they move from tested students to testing teachers, and what does this mean for teacher preparation?

College Admissions Tests are designed to predict academic achievement but they are often criticized as being biased in favor of selecting students more inclined to superficial learning than creativity. The empirical literature hints that such tests might predict creative outcomes (although not as well achievement), but few studies have considered actual creative products. With a sample of 492 college students, I tested whether scores on the ACT exam were predictive of three measures of creativity obtained several years after the admission test was taken. Openness to experience was used as an additional predictor; academic measures served as comparative outcomes. Self-reported creative accomplishments, judge-rated creative drawings, and judge-rated richness of autobiographical photo essays were all significantly related to the ACT-composite score even when personality was controlled. Reminiscent of the threshold effect, the benefits of increasing cognitive ability seem to taper off at one sigma above the ACT sample mean. These results imply that college admissions tests may indeed predict creative products and socially beneficial creative activities and not merely course grades; thus their use for admissions should not, on average, penalize the most creative students.

Standardized testing has assumed a prominent role in recent efforts to improve the quality of education. National, state, and district tests, combined with minimum competency, special program, and special diploma evaluations, have resulted in a greatly expanded set of testing requirements for most schools. At a cost of millions, even billions, of dollars and at the expense of valuable student, teacher, and administrator time, testing advocates and many policymakers still view testing as a significant, positive, and cost-effective tool in educational improvement. Testing advocates' support for testing as such a tool is based on a simple set of arguments. First, testing sets meaningful standards to which school districts, schools, teachers, and students can aspire. Second, test data can be used as feedback to shape classroom instruction. Third, 3 testing makes school systems, schools, and teachers more accountable for student learning. Finally, testing, coupled with incentives and...

Concerning America's--and Nevada's--poor educational system vs. the rest of the world (notably Finland).  How it could be improved, if tailor-made to advances in child development research: for example, starting high school later, letting teenagers sleep in.  Also discusses standardized testing and the "Social Efficiency Model," the value of play and Creativity equaling problem-solving.

Recent trends in student assessment have been dominated by standardized quantitative learning assessments (SQLA), and particularly those in high stakes testing (HST) contexts. Framing an analysis of SQLA using Biesta’s work on evidence-based research to think with Gadamer about prejudice, foreknowledge, and interpretation helps us better understand the problems with using SQLA in HST. An examination of the role of statistical analysis of SQLA and the consideration of the self-determination theory of motivation reveals a troubling and negative influence of such testing on learning. It becomes clear that SQLA are not only ill-suited for the task assigned, but in fact may play a central role in defining what learning is, compounding the difficulties, and existing deficiencies, in learning assessment.

As a diverse group of educationalists, we worry about the role of assessment in K-12 schools and current neoliberal education policies. In this paper, we aim to highlight some of the unintended or often overlooked consequences of these policies by taking an arts-based approach to our research. We interviewed various educational stakeholders about their past and present experiences with assessment, as well as their imagined futures. By creating poetic representations to present the results, we aim to shed a new light on the otherwise familiar contexts of assessment in the schools. Many are afraid of a future where neoliberal policies continue to determine the nature and role of assessment in schools, but want to believe that things will get better. Keywords: Assessment, Narrative, Qualitative Research.We are a group of educationalists in Florida who worry about the current role and politics of assessment in the schools. Some of us worry that a focus on assessment narrows the curricul...

Paulo Freire’s influential concept of “banking” education describes an oppressive process that positions teachers as the “depositors” of knowledge into passive student “receptacles.” However, according to Freire, teachers also have an “ontological vocation to be more fully human” that can only be achieved through freedom from oppression. In this article, I use Freire’s concept of banking education to reflect on my experiences giving standardized tests during my final year teaching at a high-need middle school in New York City. Drawing from narrative inquiry methodology, I bring these teaching/testing experiences into conversation with the sociopolitical discourse on banks and argue that the contradiction and dehumanization of standardized banking models oppress both students and teachers. I argue that neoliberal forms of “accountability” in public education also force educators to substitute the humanization and freedom of student engagement for a type of “proxy personhood” achieved through acting on behalf of corporations.

In "Opposition to California Assembly Bill 705: The Very Model of a Modern Majoritarian," community college English instructor John Q. Davis explores some of the common rationales behind resistance to AB 705, which range from genuine pedagogical disagreements to implicit racial bias, dispelling common misconceptions regarding the purported need for developmental/remedial education for most community college students of color. Ultimately, Davis concludes that--regardless of the particular ideological foundation underlying AB 705 opposition--the net effect of slowing down implementation of the law is the perpetuation of racial inequity in California.

Standardized testing continues to have an important function in both secondary and post-secondary schools. However effectiveness of standardized testing in its current form continues to be debated. Advocates of standardized testing claim that that teachers should be held to the same high standards as all other professionals and that standardized testing is a cost-effective means to do so. Proponents of standardized testing argue that standardized testing is not an appropriate tool to hold teachers and schools accountable because they do not measure student knowledge and skills accurately. Teachers claim that standardized testing takes up valuable instructional time, limits flexibility, challenges their professionalism, and narrows curricula. Studies show that when test scores are used to hold teachers and schools accountable it negatively impacts teachers and classroom instruction. Studies also confirm that high stakes testing have a greater effect on teachers and classroom instruction. Evidence shows that when the stakes are high, school leaders push teachers to produce high test scores, and this causes them to feel anxious and experience high stress levels. When feeling pressured, teachers report such common practices as teaching to the test, and offering repeated practice tests until students can demonstrate high levels of proficiency. There is also evidence of teacher cheating in the form of opening tests ahead of time and manipulating test answers. To use standardized testing as a tool to hold teachers and schools accountable, test design and test administration conditions need to improve.

Due to the increasing number of empiri-cal studies of teaching a demand has arisen for pedagogical action to be based on the findings of such studies. To what extent is this demand reasona-ble? How do the findings of empirical studies relate to complex conditions of pedagogical action? The following of-fers a critical view of the opportunities and limitations standardized tests pro-vide to pedagogical practice.

El presente artículo trata sobre la importancia de las pruebas estandarizadas como medio de evaluación y medición del aprendizaje y nivel de conocimiento y uso de las lenguas extranjeras, específicamente el inglés. Se sabe que desde la segunda mitad del siglo XX los mecanismos para determinar con un buen nivel de validez y confiabilidad la competencia lingüística y comunicativa de una persona fueron pruebas que iniciaron un proceso de investigación de campo y de revisión continua para asegurar su calidad. Hoy en un mundo globalizado y con muchas posibilidades para estudiantes, profesores, e investigadores se han popularizado e institucionalizado este tipo de pruebas en los diferentes países del mundo. Colombia no ha sido la excepción puesto que desde comienzos de la década del 2000 el Ministerio de Educación Nacional se ha acogido al estándar  promovido por el Marco Común Europeo de referencia para las Lenguas, que permite estandarizar los niveles de medición de aprendizaje de la lengua extranjera en estudiantes, profesiones y profesionales en general.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a general understanding of standardized testing as well as the current controversy surrounding it, particularly in the context of performance-based accountability systems. The overview addresses the following questions related to standardized testing:

1. What do stakeholders need to understand about standardized testing?

2. What is the history of standardized tests and how have the tests been used?

3. What are the reasons for the current controversy over standardized testing?

August 2015 Overview The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-Second Edition (ADOS-2) is an updated, semi-structured, standardized observational assessment tool designed to assess autism spectrum disorders in children, adolescents, and adults (Lord, Rutter, DiLavore, Risi, Gotham, & Bishop, 2012). The ADOS-2 assesses communication, social interaction, play, and restricted and repetitive behaviors. The instrument consists of five modules selected based on age and level of expressive language. The ADOS-2 has updated protocols, revised algorithms, and a Toddler Module for children between 12 and 30 months. Observations are recorded and scored by the examiner. Modules 1 through 4 provide cutoff scores to aid in interpretation. The Toddler Module provides "ranges of concern" rather than cutoff scores. Administration time is 40 to 60 minutes.

Large scale assessment influences national and international educational policy debates and reforms. Assessment data is increasingly used as a government instrument. However, within the contemporary realm of the current global testing regime both the cultural and the historical conditions of assessment are often neglected. This volume is therefore devoted to the reconstruction of "assessment cultures" (interpretation patterns, discourses, instruments, practices) and their involved groups of actors. The contributions cover examples of Western European, Eurasian, East Asian, Latin, and North American as well as international settings and refer to epochs ranging from the early modern period up to the current context

Research using current literature on legal reasoning was conducted with the goals of (a) determining what skills are most important in good legal reasoning according to such literature, (b) determining the extent to which existing Law School Admission Test item types and subtypes are designed to assess those skills, and (c) suggesting test specifications or new or refined item types and formats that could be developed in the future to assess any important skills that appear [by (a) and (b)] to be measured in a limited or minimal way by the current LSAT. So far as can be determined, such systematic research using legal reasoning literature has never been previously conducted. This report presents the findings of this research.

Standardised testing regimes, including the National Assessment
Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) in Australia, have
impacted on relationships between and within schools, and on
teachers’ work and on pedagogies. Previous analyses of the
effects of NAPLAN have been generated outside of the test
situation: frequently through attitudinal surveys and qualitative
interviews. This article takes as its point of departure two intensely
affective events associated with the NAPLAN test day itself. These
events erupted in two qualitative studies of students’ schooling
experiences: a study of students’ experiences of NAPLAN and a
study of students’ experiences of student voice at school. We ask,
after Deleuze and Guattari, What can a NAPLAN test do? Exploring
the entangled corporeal (physical and embodied) and incorporeal
(psychic and subjectivating) wounds effected in and through
these events, we analyse the dynamic constitution and reconstitutions
of ‘at risk’ categorisations. While the NAPLAN test is
not claimed to cause physical and psychical injury, we argue that
standardised test conditions, in these singular events, are
inextricably entwined with the formation of particular students’
schooled subjectivities.

This is how you can improve your scores on IELTS, TOEFL, SAT, and other standardized tests including multiple choice questions or MCQ. This workshop offers step by step tips to find the correct answer to ANY multiple choice question.
NOTE:  You can watch the video on my YouTube channel:
https://youtu.be/sQaFs8x8KVY

This study aims (a) to find out the students’ and the instructors’ perceptions of the Compulsory English Language Course exams used to assess language performance at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University (COMU). It further aims (b) to determine what other objective test techniques can also be used in these exams in addition to the multiple-choice test technique by taking all the students’ and the instructors’ opinions into consideration. Quantitative research methodology was used in this descriptive study. In the light of the literature; in order to achieve the aims stated above, two questionnaires were designed by the researcher and administered to 367 students and 33 instructors. After analyzing the internal consistency of the items in the questionnaires, the researcher found acceptable Alpha reliability values both for the students’ questionnaire and for the instructors’ questionnaire. Data from the students and instructors were collected by using these questionnaires. Instructors’ questionnaire was administered to the instructors who had worked or were still working as the instructors of ‘Compulsory English Language Course’ at COMU. The students who involved in the study were all in their second years at the university and they all had the “Compulsory English Language Course” the year before the study was conducted. The data obtained through the questionnaires were analyzed via Descriptive Statistics, One-way ANOVA, Independent Samples T-Test, Cronbach Alpha Reliability Test and Nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis Test by using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) 13.0 for Windows. The findings of the descriptive statistics showed that students expect the instructors to attach more importance to the activities improving their speaking, listening and writing skills. Furthermore, the results displayed that nearly 73 percent of the instructors prefer the exams to be prepared by a testing office while more than half of the students expect them to be prepared by the instructor of the course. The results also revealed that both the students and the instructors believed it was necessary to use other test techniques in addition to the multiple-choice test technique commonly used in the exams. According to the results of the One-way ANOVA, the more successful the students are, the more satisfied they are with the exams’ different characteristics. As for the instructors, Nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis Test results indicated that there occurred no significant differences between instructors’ educational background and the objective test techniques that they use in their classrooms. Additionally, it was found out there were no significant differences between instructors’ educational background and their ideas on the objective test techniques that can be used in the exams. However, the more experienced the instructors are, the more efficient they find the exams prepared by the testing office. Another important finding was that although their order of preferring objective test techniques slightly differs, the first eight test techniques that the students and instructors preferred in the exams were completely same. The study concludes that both the students and the instructors have some doubts about the efficiency of the testing office’s current practices. Therefore, for more efficient exams, test constructors can include the eight objective test techniques [(1) multiple-choice questions, (2) matching, (3) ordering tasks, (4) completion, (5) true-false questions, (6) short-answer questions, (7) error correction and (8) word changing], which were commonly preferred by the instructors and the students, into the Compulsory English Language Course Exams. In addition to the centrally administered achievement tests of this course, instructors should use teacher-made achievement tests and take the scores that students get from these tests into consideration while assessing their learners’ language performance. Moreover, having a testing office with test constructors specialized just at testing will be a good idea for preparing better and more efficient tests.

Ang pag-aaral na ito ay sinusuri sa pamamagitang ng mga epekto ng standardized
testing sa mga mag-aaral ng Grade 11 Humanities and Social Sciences ng Unibersidad ng San Carlos – South Campus. Naglalahad ito ng apat na pangunahing tanong ukol sa standardized testing ng mga mag-aaral. Ang mga ito ay ang epekto ng standardized tests sa mga mag-aaral, ang uri ng pagpapatupad ng mga standardized tests, posibilidad na may alternatibo sa standardized testing at ang mga layunin ng isang standardized test. Ginagamit sa pagtitipon ng mga datos ng pag-aaral ang isang interval scale sarbey na naglalaman ng mga katanungan na sumasagot gamit sa frequency scaling. Sa pamamagitan ng average formula ay nakuha ng mga mananaliksik ang average ng bawat salik ng mga pangunahing epekto at naisaayos ito base sa katumbas na implikasyon. Sinusuportahan ito ng mga teoryang: Multiple Intelligences Theory at Multiliteracies Theory. Natuklasan na may malaking epekto sa pag-iisip ng mga mag-aaral ang standardized testing at nagdudulot ito ng stress at test anxiety ayon sa datos nakalap galing sa HUMSS 11 D, nakita din na importante ang standardized tests dahil nagpapatibay ito ng critical thinking, hindi raw epektibo ang standardized tests sa pagsukat ng kaalaman ng mga estudyante at pabor ang mga respondente na magkaroon ng isang alternatibong uri ng pagsusukat ng kaalaman. Iminumungkahi ang sumusunod na rekomendasyon: magsagawa ng kahalintulad na pagtataya sa mga opinyon ng mga estudyante galing sa ibang paaralan kaugnay sa epekto ng standardized testing, bumuo ng mas matibay na kaligirang teoretikal na gumagamit ng mga mas mabuti na teorya, pagbuo ng mas epektibo na timeframe upang maisakatuparan ang mga gawain sa pag-aaral na ito at mag-aral sa isang uri ng standardized test kagaya ng National Achievement Test o National Career Assessment Exam.

Summative assessment is an appraisal of learning at the end of an instructional unit or at a specific point in time. It compares student knowledge or skills against standards or benchmarks. Summative assessment evaluates the mastery of learning whereas its counterpart, formative assessment, measures progress and functions as a diagnostic tool to help specific students. Generally, summative assessment gauges how a particular population responds to an intervention rather than focusing on an individual. It often aggregates data across students to act as an independent yardstick that allows teachers, administrators, and parents to judge the effectiveness of the materials, curriculum, and instruction used to meet national, state, or local standards. Summative assessment includes midterm exams, final project, papers, teacher-designed tests, standardized tests, and high-stakes tests. As a subset of summative assessment, standardized tests play a pivotal role in ensuring that schools are held to the same standards and that all students regardless of race or socio-economic background perform to expectations. Summative assessment provides educators with the metrics to know what’s working and what’s not.

STANDAR MAKALAH diajukan sebagai salah satu tugas mata kuliah Pengembangan Asesmen Pendidikan Biologi yang diampu oleh Dr. Ana Ratna Wulan, M. Pd. disusun oleh: Naufal Ahmad Muzakki 2002009 Shinta Dwi Kurnia 2002111 PROGRAM STUDI PENDIDIKAN BIOLOGI FAKULTAS PENDIDIKAN MATEMATIKA DAN ILMU PENGETAHUAN ALAM UNIVERSITAS PENDIDIKAN INDONESIA BANDUNG 2020 KATA PENGANTAR Puji dan syukur dipanjatkan kehadirat Allah ‫ﷻ‬ karena berkat rahmat dan karunia-Nya penulis dapat menyelesaikan makalah yang berjudul Asesmen Analisis Butir Soal dan Tes Standar sebagai salah satu tugas mata kuliah Pengembangan Asesmen Pendidikan Biologi. Shalawat serta salam semoga selalu tercurahkan limpahkan kepada Nabi Muhammad ‫ﷺ‬ beserta keluarga, sahabat, dan kita sebagai pengikutnya hingga akhir zaman. Penulisan makalah ini bertujuan untuk menjelaskan tentang asesmen analisis butir soal dan tes standar. Isi makalah ini semoga dapat bermanfaat bagi penulis ataupun pihak yang memerlukan rujukan tentang asesmen analisis butir soal dan tes standar. Penulis menyadari bahwa dalam penyusunan makalah ini masih terdapat banyak kekurangan. Oleh karenanya, kritik dan saran yang bersifat membangun sangat diharapkan untuk perbaikan kedepannya. Semoga makalah ini bermanfaat dan dapat menjadi berkah bagi penulis dan pembacanya. Bandung, 30 November 2020

This ethnography takes place at four of northern India’s most renowned, all-girls’ private boarding schools, established in reference to the British Public Schooling model mainly during the tail ends of colonialism by Indian queens and British memsahibs on the sub-continent. It is a story told from the points of view of founders, administrators, and teachers, but primarily from that of students, based on fieldwork conducted from July 2013 through June 2014. Schools heralded as historic venues of purported upper-caste girls’ emancipation, this study interrogates the legacies of this colonial-nationalist moment by examining how these institutions and their female students engage in newer processes and discourses of class formation and gendered empowerment through schooling. For one, it considers the dichotomous (re)constructions of gendered and classed personhoods enacted through exclusionary modernities, particularly in terms of who gains access to these schools, both physically and through symbolic forms of belonging. It then examines the reclamation of these constructs within (inter)national development discourses of girls’ empowerment and the role of neoliberal privatization in reconstituting elite schooling experiences with gender as its globalizing force. Here, seemingly paradoxical relationships between such concepts as discipline and freedom, duties and rights, collective responsibility and individual competition are explored, arguing that the pressures of academic success, tensions over the future, and role of high stakes examinations and privatized tutoring are contributing to student experiences of performative or fatiguing kinds of empowerment. Through such frames, extreme binary constructions of empowerment are complicated, demonstrating how female Public School students exist more within middling spaces of “betweenness,” of practiced mediation. Empowerment in this sense is not an achievable status, nor unidirectional process, but a set of learned tools or skills deployed in recurring moments of contradiction or in difficult deliberations, whereby students variously buy in, (re)create, opt-out of, or reject proposed models of “successful” or “legitimate,” female personhood. Overall, this ethnography problematizes assumed relationships between empowerment and privilege, questions the alignments between school and the (upper-)middle class home, and suggests that as the reproductive capabilities of elite schooling are challenged in the face of newer venues of capital, these all-girls’ Public Schools and their students are finding unique ways to remain or become the elite of consideration.

This thesis establishes a numerical profile of native English-speaking students’ literacy in a Spanish-English two-way dual language immersion program, based on Texas state assessment data. This is a relevant area for research because such programs are increasingly common, and yet there are relatively few investigations focusing on this group’s literacy. The
subjects are third-, fourth-, and fifth grade students in a Central Texas school district. Two-way immersion (TWI) programs integrate children from diverse language backgrounds and provide academic instruction in two languages. In this case, the curriculum is taught in Spanish and English. Approximately half of the students in these TWI programs are
classified as Limited English Proficient/English Language Learners (ELL/LEP), which indicates that their primary language is one other than English and that through norm-referenced tests they demonstrate to not have acquired English language abilities commensurate with their age or
grade level. The other half of the students participating in this TWI program is non-ELL/LEP, meaning that their home language is English (also known as majority language speakers). I analyze the non-ELL/LEP students’ scores on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic
Readiness (STAAR) reading tests, and compare with ELL/LEP students in the same program, as well as grade-level peers in monolingual (English-only) settings. I also investigate data trends related to socioeconomic status.

This is a section of my book The Swindle of Innovative Educational Finance.  It examines the case of Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and its Summit personalized learning platform to argue that philanthrocapitalism is business rather than philanthropy that is seeking profits through data commodification and the usurping of teacher labor.  It criticizes the ways that adaptive learning technologies that purport to be "personalized" undermine approaches to teaching and learning that are attentive to experience and context.

Use of a single, standardised instrument to make high-stakes decisions about test- takers is pervasive in higher education. Contrary to longstanding best practices encouraged by researchers, professional organizations, test publishers, and many accrediting bodies, however, few, if any such institutions have endeavoured to meaningfully validate the instrument(s) they use for their specific context and purposes. The current study attempted to address this void by developing and applying an argument-based validation framework for two widely adopted placement assessment methods – a standardised placement test (Accuplacer), and a locally developed and marked writing sample –utilised by a 2-year higher education institution in the Pacific.
A hybrid of two validation structures – Kane’s interpretive model and Bachman’s assessment use argument – was implemented in order to assure a balanced focus on both test score interpretation and test utilization. Various types and sources of evidence informed the study, including instrument outcomes, student course results, institutional practices and policies, test publisher data, and the opinions of stakeholders gathered via focus group interview and questionnaires.
Results are argued to provide insights regarding a number of current issues in the literature, including: i) debates regarding the relative strengths and weaknesses of standardised tests and locally developed and marked writing samples for informing placement decisions; ii) the value of locally conducted validation efforts to evaluate the performance and impact of an institution’s chosen assessment instruments, and identifying opportunities for improvement; and iii) the need for further argument-based validation studies, particularly those which attend to both test score interpretation and the long- neglected area of test utilization, to be carried out wherever assessments are used to make decisions which impact stakeholders.

Drawing on autonomist Marxist political theory, this article argues that the neoliberal standardization of schooling encloses student subjectivities. The standardization of schooling hinges not only on strict discipline and high-stakes accountability, but also on the individuation of the capacity to live and learn collectively. In this sense, educational standardization produces schools that are sites of institutionalized subjection, enclosing the possible subject positions students can inhabit and hindering collective struggles for autonomy. Rethinking educational struggle from an autonomist perspective offers an oppositional educational  framework with which to counter the enclosure of subjectivity.

In this paper we provide a proposal to make an early screening of gifted children using a low-cost approach and at the same time investigating possible dyslexia in pupils we are testing.
This will be obtained through the combination of two different types of IQ tests: the Raven’s Matrices and the WISC. For children younger than 9, we will also use eight subscales of the WISC-IV to discover a possibility of specific comorbidities.
The aforementioned approach could (abstractly) also be used to discover hints of creative potential in a given subject, putting the IQ cut-off around +1.33 standard deviations from the expected mean (age corrected IQ≥120, σ=15).
We are able to differentiate between three age groups (7-11, 12-13, 14-16) by making use of separate forms of the Raven’s Matrices for each of them and providing an increased ceiling for IQ estimation.
Finally, we present a particular example of IQ growth by age, by taking one highly gifted boy who took a wide set of supervised and high range IQ tests as case study.