Abstract
The use of nationally standardized tests, both norm-referenced and, more recently, criterion-referenced or content-based1 tests, administered to elementary and secondary pupils in the public schools, has steadily increased over the past generation and has most recently mushroomed in response to legislative and popular demands accompanying the “educational reform” movement. This phenomenon raises a host of serious legal and policy issues because—often despite the good intentions of those individuals and companies which develop the tests—these instruments are widely misused and misinterpreted by school personnel. As a result, the educational opportunities and occupational aspirations of thousands upon thousands of school children are thwarted. This paper is intended to sketch the dimensions of the problem, in order to provide a basis for reflection by the members of the National Commission on Testing and Public Policy on how such abuses can best be curbed. It also reviews the history of legal challenges to test use and assesses the future of litigation in the area.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
See, for example, Ronald Edmonds and John Frederiksen, Search for Effective Schools: The Identification and Analysis of City Schools That Are Instructionally Effective for Poor Children (1978)
William Purkey and Marshall Smith, “Effective Schools: A Review,” Elementary Sch. J. 427 (1983), v. 83:4, 427–82.
The Pygmalion effect documented by Rosenthal, see Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, Pygmalion in the Classroom (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968)
Caroline Persell, Education and Inequality, 123–34 (New York: Free Press, 1977), is just one example of the ways in which conscious or unconscious teacher behaviors could affect student performance and assessment.
But see supra note 5.
Terman and others who pioneered the field made assumptions about the differential performance which they could expect to find across racial and ethnic groups, if not across class or socioeconomic lines, and they shaped their test designs to produce data which appeared to confirm these assumptions. See Leon Kamin, The Science and Politics of IQ 5–30 (New York: J. Wiley and Sons, 1974)
James Lawler, IQ: Heritability and Racism, 44–51 (New York: International Publications, 1978)
Jeannie Oakes, Keeping Track, How Schools Structure Inequality, 35–37 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1985).
See, for example, Ann Bastian, et al., Choosing Equality, The Case for Democratic Schooling, 74–75 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986)
Howard Gardner, “Notes on Some Educational Implications of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences,” in Measures in the College Admission Process, 130 (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1986)
Jerry Patterson, et al., “How to Avoid the Dangers of Testing,” in Paul Houts, ed., The Myth of Measurability, 341–45 (New York: Hart Publishing Co., 1977)
Ronald Samuda, Psychological Testing of American Minorities: Issues and Consequences, 131–57 (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1975); Daniel Goleman, “Rethinking the Value of Intelligence Tests,” N.Y. Times, November 9,1986, §12, p. 23.
For instance, the Army Alpha Examination was administered to all recruits and draftees in the First World War and became, at least to some degree, the basis for the army’s acceptance or rejection of individuals for service and also for their assignment to tasks within the armed forces. See Ralph Tyler, “Introduction: A Perspective on the Issues,” in Ralph Tyler and Richard Wolf, eds., Crucial Issues in Testing, 4 (Berkeley: McCutchan Publishing Co., 1974). “Educational testing thus began as a means for selecting and sorting pupils, and the principles and practices of testing that have been worked out since 1918 are largely the refining of these functions rather than other educational purposes.”
For example, Donahue v. Copiague Union Free School Dist., 47 N.Y.2d 440, 391 N.E.2d 1352,418 N.Y.S.2d 375 (1979).
See supra note 12.
Omitted from this discussion has been the matter of accounting for the widespread racially differential performance on most nationally standardized tests, and the possibility of cultural or item bias. An adequate treatment of these questions is beyond the scope of this paper. I wish to make only a few simple points: (1) Unless one is willing to engage in the assumption that minority students will characteristically score lower on any standardized instrument for hereditary or genetic reasons, or the assumption that the socioeconomic status and environmental influences upon all minority children are identical, the characteristic racially differential test performance observed today is cause for deep concern and renders the status quo unacceptable. (2) Without seeking to determine whether tests or individual questions are culturally or otherwise biased, there does exist a mechanism by which irrelevant or apparently false differentials can be eliminated. This method, typified by the settlement in the “Golden Rule” insurance licensing exam case, is based upon the fact that standardized tests are constructed by selecting sample questions, within specific areas or domains to be covered, from among a large number of items written by experts or consultants. After a detailed item analysis by race of the results of a pilot or field test, valid sample questions that do not produce skewing along racial lines can be substituted for those which do, thus reducing or eliminating the chance that bias or irrelevant factors could affect scoring. (I emphatically do not accept the thesis that the “Golden Rule” approach is inconsistent with high standards or proper test construction. See, however, Michael Rebell, “Disparate Impact of Teacher Competency Testing on Minorities: Don’t Blame the Test-Takers-or the Tests,” 4 Yale Law and Pol’y Rev. 375, 391–97 (1986).)
As to cultural bias, see Larry P. v. Riles, 495 F. Supp. 926, 956–60 (N.D. Cal. 1979), aff’d 793 F.2d 969 (9th Cir. 1986); Gerald Bracey, On the Compelling Need to Go Beyond Minimum Competency (Address to Twelfth Annual Conference on Large Scale Assessment, Boulder, Colorado, June 8, 1982) (emphasis supplied): What happens during the course of schooling? Schools teach “reading” as a subject but they also teach math literacy as part of math, and science literacy as part of science and social studies literacy and poetry literacy and so on. The grammar and syntax of these specific literacies vary somewhat. In the course of X years of school [it may be] that these literacies fuse and maybe even become abstracted in the way that Harry Harlow talked about abstracted learning sets 30 years ago or become the “g” factor that Thurstone argued for even earlier. Most children become able to read most passages that they encounter more or less well because they’ve encountered so many different kinds of passages, but I would bet that if you constructed two tests of equal difficulty as indicated by readability, syntax, grammar, item specifications, etc., but varied the degree of familiarity that the child had with the subject matter, scores would vary in the same direction. Of course, this is never done because of the way CRTs are constructed. Those of you who read the Scientific American, a magazine for that mythical being, the “educated layman,” will immediately intuit this truth. Can you read an article on quantum physics with the same speed and comprehension as one on test utilization?
American Psychological Association, American Educational Research Association, and National Council on Measurement in Education, Standards for Educational and Psychological Tests (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1974). The APA Standards were revised in 1985.
In re Dillon County School District No. 1, Docket #84-VI16 (U.S. Department of Education, July 25, 1986).
495 F. Supp. at 970–71, 973. Indeed, one study cited by the court concluded that the tests had “little or no validity” for use with minority children. Id. at 972.
Brookhart v. Illinois State Board of Education, 697 F.2d 179 (7th Cir. 1983).
See supra note 12.
See, for example, Jeannie Oakes, Keeping Track, How Schools Structure Inequality.
See, for example, Gene Glass, The Effectiveness of Four Educational Interventions, Project Report No. 84-A-19, Institute for Research on Educational Finance and Governance (Palo Alto: Stanford University, August, 1984)
Jeannie Oakes, Keeping Track, How Schools Structure Inequality, 208–11; Robert Slavin, Cooperative Learning (New York: Longman, 1983).
See, for example, Ralph Tyler, “Using Tests in Grouping Students for Instruction,” in Ralph Tyler and Richard Wolf, eds., Crucial Issues in Testing, 66–67 (Berkeley: McCutchan Publishing Co., 1974).
San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973).
McNeal v. Tate County School District, 508 F.2d 1017 (5th Or. 1975).
Compare, for example, Morales v. Shannon, 516 F.2d 411 (5th Cir. 1975); Anderson v. Banks, 520 F. Supp. 472, 500–08 (S.D. Ga. 1981), subsequent order aff’d sub nom. Johnson v. Sikes, 730 F.2d 644 (11th Cir. 1984).
See supra note 16.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chachkin, N.J. (1989). Testing in Elementary and Secondary Schools: Can Misuse Be Avoided?. In: Gifford, B.R. (eds) Test Policy and the Politics of Opportunity Allocation: The Workplace and the Law. Evaluation in Education and Human Services, vol 22. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2502-1_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2502-1_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-7629-6
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-2502-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive