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Chapter 13: Making Sense Out of Standardized Test Scores
 * Teachers must be able to understand and correctly evaluate their own assessment scores as well as standardized tests.
 * A standardized test is an assessment instrument administered, scored, and interpreted in a standard, predetermined manner.
 * They are used to assess students’ achievement and aptitude
 * They can be developed by large testing companies or by state departments of education
 * Standardized achievement tests are statewide tests that are typically installed to satisfy legislative mandate aimed to achieve educational accountability
 * Standardized test developers have been attempting to incorporate more constructed-response items in the tests
 * Writers of multiple choice questions worry about giving clues away in the question
 * Writers of short answer questions try to avoid ambiguous language
 * Although most standardized test results focus on the individual, a teacher may need to describe the performance of one’s students as a group.
 * The teacher would need to take the mean or median performance of the class (central tendency)
 * A raw score is the number of items a student answers correctly
 * Variability must be addressed when looking at group scores, which is how spread out the scores are and can be measured in range by subtracting the lowest student’s score from the highest student’s score
 * Standard deviation is used more than range and is the average difference between the individual scores in a group of scores and the mean of that set of scores.
 * Larger standard deviations represent more spread in a distribution of scores
 * Individual test scores are interpreted in absolute or relative terms
 * When a teacher interprets a student’s score absolutely, the teacher infers what the student can and cannot do.
 * When a teacher interprets a student’s score relatively, the teacher infers how the student stacks up against other students currently taking the test or have already taken the test
 * Percentiles are used as an interpretive scheme in which it is the comparison of a student’s score with those of other students in a norm group.
 * The percentile indicates the percent of students in the norm group that the student outperformed
 * Grade equivalent scores are indicators of student test performance based on grade level and months of the school year and their purpose is to transform scores on standardized tests into an index reflecting a student’s grade level progress in school-scores should be viewed as where a student is along a developmental continuum
 * Scale scores are converted raw scores that use a new, arbitrarily chosen scale to represent levels of achievement or ability. These scores are helpful in describing group test scores at the state, district, and school levels
 * SAT and ACT are America’s most widely used college entrance tests
 * SAT (originally known as Scholastic Aptitude Test) aims to asses students’ academic aptitudes
 * ACT is an achievement test measures high school students’ mastery of the skills and knowledge needed for college.
 * 75% of a student’s academic success in college is linked to factors other than their scores on either of these tests.

1980s – many states passed laws that required annually administered achievement test for students 2002 – NCLB passed by George W. Bush making high-stakes testing in America a requirement High-stakes tests – assessment whose consequences have important implications either for students and/or for educators Purpose of an educational achievement test – to make a reasonable inference about a student’s status with respect to the knowledge and/or skills in the curricular aim the test represents 1. Professional Ethics: No test-prep practice should violate the ethical norms of the education profession. ·  General ethics – theft, cheating, lying etc.   ·   Teachers should be a model for ethical behavior for children because they serve “in place of the parent” ·  Professionally unethical practices are those that would discredit the education profession o  Erodes public confidence in our schools o  Financial support declines o  Education profession becomes less effective o  Leaves children less properly educated ·  You can lose your teaching credentials from unethical high-stakes testing practices 2. Educational Defensibility: No test-preparation practice should increase students’ test scores without simultaneously increasing students’ mastery of the curricular aim tested. ·  Deceptive picture of students’ achievement ·  Robs students of needed instruction Special instruction – extra preparation sessions during or outside class devoted exclusively to the readying of students for tests Regular classroom instruction – part of the teacher’s ongoing instructional program i.  Less able to generalize what they have learned Teaching to the test: 2 definitions QUESTION: If previous-form test preparation violates educational defensibility, then way do so many high schools recommend students take SAT prep courses that use the current-form prep? Do you think there is a way to give students examples of actual test items so they know what to expect without it being unethical?
 * __Chapter 14:__**
 * __ Appropriate and Inappropriate Test-Preparation Practices  __**
 * 2 Evaluative guidelines to decide the appropriateness of given test-preparation practices: **
 * 5 Test Prep Practices: **
 * 1) Previous-form preparation
 * 2) Practice with earlier and no longer published versions of the same test
 * 3) Special instruction
 * 4) Violates educational defensibility guideline
 * 5) Current-form preparation
 * 6) Practice with items from a test the student will encounter
 * 7) Special instruction
 * 8) Violates educational defensibility guideline
 * 9) Violates professional ethics
 * 10) Generalized test-taking preparation
 * 11) Practice test-taking skills for a variety of achievement-test formats
 * 12) Special instruction
 * 13) Good prep practice if used sparingly
 * 14) Makes students less intimidated of tests
 * 15) Same-format preparation
 * 16) Content from tests
 * 17) Same format as items actually used on the test
 * 18) Regular classroom instruction
 * 19) Violates educational defensibility guideline
 * 1) Varied-format preparation
 * 2) Content covered on test
 * 3) Practice with different formats of test-items
 * 4) Regular classroom instruction
 * 5) Good prep practice
 * Teacher is directing instruction toward the knowledge, skills, or affective variables represented by the test; good way of teaching to the test
 * Teacher is directing their instruction specifically toward the actual items on the test itself; bad way of teaching to the test