subject: Test Use
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NAEP Primer
description- – This guide to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is designed to help the secondary data analyst use the NAEP and to introduce some of the sophisticated technology used by the NAEP. The NAEP has been gathering information on American students since 1969. It samples populations that consist of all students in U.S. schools, both public and private, at grades 4, 8, and 12, as well as ages 9, 13, and 17. NAEP data are designed for measuring trends in student performance over time and for cross-sectional analyses of the correlates of performance. Since the introduction of the Trial State Assessments in 1990, the NAEP has also been used to compare the performances of students in participating states. All data collected by the NAEP are available for the secondary user. This primer, which assumes that the user has a working knowledge of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, gets the user started on the simplified database and introduces a few special features of the NAEP. The examples use a set of 1,000 eighth graders assessed in mathematics. These mini-files are used to illustrate several basic NAEP analyses. Five appendixes present file layouts and variable information, as well as a guide to using the attached primer computer disk. (Contains 28 figures, 2 tables, and 46 references.) (SLD)
- – Test Use
- – 1995-01-01
The Gap between Testing and Technology in Schools. NBETPP Statements, Volume 1, Number 2.
description- – Technology and testing have become two popular prescriptions for improving education. The technology nostrum suggests that the infusion of modern technology into schools will bolster teaching and learning and will prepare students for an increasingly technological workplace. The testing prescription holds that using standardized test scores to rate schools and to decide whether students should be promoted or graduate will provide incentives for improvement. What is not often recognized is that these two prescriptions may work against each other. Research findings suggest a great gap between computer use in schools and testing strategies used for school improvement, a gap that will increase as more students become more accustomed to writing on computers. There are at least three possible ways to reduce this gap: (1) decrease students' computer time so that they do not become accustomed to writing on computers, retaining the paper-and-pencil skills needed for current kinds of tests; (2) have students complete their tests on a computer; and (3) perhaps the most reasonable solution is to recognize the limitations of current testing programs, and acknowledge that the scores of high-stakes tests do not measure the capabilities of some students adequately. (Contains 12 endnotes.) (SLD)
- – Test Use
- – 2000-01-01
High Stakes Testing and High School Completion. NBETPP Statements, Volume 1, Number 3.
description- – This report examines how high stakes assessments affect dropout and high school completion rates. The focus is on five suggestive lines of evidence about this relationship. This evidence is drawn in part from studies done at Boston College or by researchers for the National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy. The conclusion drawn is that high stakes testing programs are linked to decreased rates of high school completion. The evidence is mainly correlational, but it is suggestive enough to warrant further research to clarify the role of high stakes testing in decisions to drop out of school. The first evidence is from the era of minimum competency testing (MCT). There was no MCT in half of the 10 states with the lowest dropout rates, and the states with the highest dropout rates had MCT programs with standards set at least in part by the state. A second piece of evidence shows that in schools with proportionately more students of low socioeconomic status that used high stakes minimum competency tests, early dropout rates, between 8th and 10th grades, were 4 to 6 percentage points higher than in schools that were similar except for the high stakes test requirement. The third piece of evidence comes from high school graduation testing and dropouts in Florida. A more complex relationship is suggested by the fact that only for students with moderately good grades was a significant increase in dropping out associated with failure of the high school graduation test. A fourth line of evidence comes from the evolution of high stakes testing in Texas, where findings suggest that some high school sophomores dropped out of school because of the requirement of satisfactory performance on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills. A final point is the relationship among high stakes testing, grade retention, and dropout rates. Research has generally suggested that grade retention makes students more likely to drop out. Interaction with graduation test requirements may result in increased numbers of dropouts.
- – Test Use
- – 2000-02-01
Educational Testing as a Technology. NBETPP Statements, Volume 2, Number 1.
description- – The term"technology"often conjures up visions of scientific experiments and industrial processes, but technology is also a tool, something put together to satisfy a need, solve a problem, or attain a goal in social, economic, and educational institutions. In a broader sense, technology is any body of special knowledge, skills, and procedures, and in this sense, testing is clearly technology, embedded in such systems as education, government, and business. Testing has"hardware"and a community of practitioners. It is generally regarded as fundamentally neutral in moral standing, but the use of testing in a particular context determines its moral standing. In addition to the proposition that testing is a technology, two additional characteristics of technologies must be considered by the National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy: the fact that technological concerns tend to be directed by elites isolated from those who are not members of the elites and the fact that technological endeavor is firmly associated with a"religion of progress."Consideration of these issues supports the view that tests are a technology with a well-developed technological community and technical underpinnings arcane to lay people. Testing is a complex technological system with its own infrastructure that must be understood. (Contains 30 endnotes.) (SLD)
- – Test Use
- – 2001-01-01
The Roles of Testing and Diversity in College Admissions.
description- – In order to understand the roles of test scores and diversity characteristics (including race and ethnicity) in the admission process, National Board researchers interviewed admissions directors who worked at selective public and private institutions are well as admissions consultants in the summer and fall of 1999. This report presents an overview of the roles that test scores and diversity characteristics play at the different stages of the admission process, as identified by the interviewees. The overarching theme is the variety of ways in which selective institutions use test score and diversity information, from tools for marketing and recruitment to information for admissions decision making to foci for support services on campus. Also presented are the strategies that interviewees identified for balancing the effects of these roles on the academic and racial/ethnic composition of the applicant, admitted, enrolled, and retained student body. The report also explores some of the options that colleges have in their use and interpretation of test score and diversity information, and it presents some suggestions about colleges might begin to think about the roles of test scores and diversity characteristics of the admission process. Appendixes contain two interview protocols.
- – Test Use
- – 2001-03-01
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