Test student assessment: Encyclopedia II - Test student assessment - Limitations of testing and associated issues

Test student assessment - Limitations of testing and associated issues

General aptitude tests are used in certain countries as a basis for entrance into colleges and universities. An issue associated such use of tests is that they are known to be subject to practice effects, and do not assess the accumulated learning of students during their schooling years. As a consequence, the SAT have been renamed from the Scholastic Aptitude Test to the Scholastic Assessment Test. Some evidence indicates that SAT scores of 11th and 12th graders do not correlate highly with freshman year grades and correlate poorly with overall undergraduate ranking — this has caused pressure for ETS to re-evaluate their exams before universities start requiring applicants to provide exam scores for ACT, an exam which also does not correlate very well with freshmen GPA but does correlate better than the SAT. Reasons for poor correlation are as follows:

• Questions on the exam may be improperly weighting the types of problems encountered within the environment the exam intends to predict. An example of improperly weighting would be for an exam to have the ratio of questions in geometry, calculus, and number theory dissimilar to the ratio of these questions present in the environment for which the exam is intended to serve as a predictor of future performance. More egregiously, a mathematics exam may ask solely about the names, birthdates, and country of origin of various mathematicians when such knowledge is of little importance in a mathematics curriculum.

• People are variously susceptible to stress. Some are virtually unaffected, and excel on tests, while in extreme cases, individuals can become very nervous and forget large compontents of exam material. To counterbalance this, often teachers and professors don't grade their students on tests alone, placing considerable weight on homework, attendance, in-class discussion activity, and laboratory investigations (where applicable).

• Through specialized training on material and techniques specifically created to suit the test, students can be "coached" to "game" the test, significantly raising their scores without actually significantly increasing their general intelligence or knowledge.

• Although test organizers attempt to prevent it and impose strict penalties for it, academic dishonesty (cheating) can be used to obtain an advantage over other test-takers. On a multiple-choice test, lists of answers may be obtained beforehand. On a free-response test, the questions may be obtained beforehand, or the subject may write an answer that creates the illusion of knowledge.

Despite such issues, tests are less susceptible to cheating than other tools of learning evaluation. Laboratory results can be fabricated, and homework can be done by one student and copied by rote by others. The presence of a responsible test administrator, in a controlled environment, helps to guard against cheating.

Additionally, in some cases, high-stakes testing induces examinees to rise to meet the exam's high expectations. Generally, the term high-stakes is reserved for tests that are used as a basis for competitive entry into future courses, including tests which are highly weighted within selection criteria that are used for entrance into university courses.

Test student assessment - The SAT and other high-stakes exams

In the United States and other countries, tests based primarily on multiple-choice questions have come to be used for assessments of great importance, with consequences including the funding levels of public schools and the admission of students to institutions of higher education. The most important such test in the U.S. is the SAT, which consists almost entirely of multiple-choice questions (though some of these are specifically designed to inherent inaccuracies of that question type). Originally developed as a test of a student's intrinsic intelligence, its methodology has proven vulnerable to specialized test-preparation programs that improve the subject's score. The SAT is written and administered by the College Board. For this reason, certain commentators have suggested that high stakes testing should be based more on content learned during the schooling years. Difficulties arise with respect to comparability across different schools, sectors, states and so on. A key challenge is to balance the need for comparability with the need to assess the skills, knowledge and abilities students have developed during the schooling years.

The SAT has also been criticized for an alleged racial bias; ethnic minorities supposedly fare worse on the exam than they should. As a result, it began to fall out of favor in the late 1990s, with increasing emphasis on standardized tests that measure actual knowledge. Some of these replacements have likewise come from the College Board, but many states have taken the initiative to design tests of their own. The ACT examination, introduced in 1959 as a competitor to the SAT, also features more knowledge-based questions, and is accepted as an alternative to the SAT for admission to many United States colleges. Many colleges are also placing more emphasis on measures of long-term performance such as the high-school grade point average, the difficulty of classes taken in high school, and teacher letters of recommendation.

There are also other high-stakes exams at higher educational levels, like; Fundamentals of Engineering exam administered by National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Limitations of testing and associated issues", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki