The number of high school students scoring 600 or more on the verbal portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Test has dropped by 35 percent since 1972. The influence of television, changes in the makeup of the college-bound student population, and eroding standards in secondary schools are being blamed. (MSE)

The use of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) for predicting academic success has generated tremendous debate about fairness and bias. Despite discrepant observations and arguments, the need for a credible assessment formula remains strong. Although widely used by a large number of American colleges, the SAT and similar tests are not widely used…

Test instruments designed for limited English proficient (LEP) students from pre-school through adult are reviewed in this annotated bibliography. The assessments cited have been evaluated for reliability, validity, and equity, the latter being an emerging criterion in the process of evaluating assessment instruments. The tests most commonly used…

A description of the standardized, multiple-choice Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) and how to use it is offered. Medical school admissions officers medical educators, college faculty members, and practicing physicians are active participants in selecting content, drafting test specifications, and authoring questions for the exam. The MCAT is…

The background out of which "truth in testing" legislation arose is reviewed in this report, which also describes existing state and federal testing legislation, details arguments raised in hearings on the legislation, analyzes the legal issues raised, and provides a framework for simplifying the arguments and gathering more information.…

The relationship of the dimensions of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to scores on the National Teacher's Examination (NTE) was examined. The MBTI classifies people on each of four indices: extraversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judgment/perception. A sample of 111 students, 90 percent of whom were black,…

Contrary to findings of the Educational Testing Service and the College Board, the authors contend that coaching can effectively help raise student scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). They argue that the SAT is not in fact a measure of "aptitude" and that high school grades and achievement tests are better predictors of…

Standardized achievement and aptitude tests may be of very limited value in making placement or instructional decisions about bilingual students. The practice of categorizing standardized test scores by ethnic groups obscures the difficulties of administering and interpreting tests taken by bilinguals. Individuals who are bilingual have two…

The present investigation represents a systematic effort to determine whether handicapped children have been included in the development of test norms, items, and indices of reliability and validity. It analysed up-to-date user manuals and technical supplements of 27 well known and widely used aptitude and achievement tests. Study procedure…

The Pennsylvania Preschool Inventory (PPI) was developed as a straight-forward and efficient measure of the relative cognitive development of the young child, offering an alternative to more complicated, elaborate assessment instruments. Results of the inventory are potentially relevant to both current and future school success of children between…

This work is a further validation of the findings of an earlier study of the development of a listening test to identify educational potential of disadvantaged Negro junior high school boys. The present study also sought to determine if the experimental boy's listening test (BoLT) is applicable to other ethnic and income level groups. The Bolt, a…

Using post-secondary vocational and technical education students as the populations, the objectives of this project were to determine: (1) the ability of standardized instruments to predict the various criteria of success, (2) the relative ability of the different instruments to predict each criterion of success, and (3) which sub-set of all of…

Research suggests that special tests of reasoning ability are superfluous. Reading comprehension and algebra scores on common aptitude and achievement tests are highly correlated with scores on several reasoning tests. Furthermore, three programs in reasoning skills have been shown to improve reading comprehension scores in various settings. (MCG)

The uses of standardized test results are discussed and various measurement terms are defined. Scores on criterion referenced tests are interpreted by relating performance to some predetermined criterion, whereas scores on norm-referenced tests are interpreted by comparing them with scores obtained by members of the group on which the test was…

This brief, filed by Educational Testing Service (ETS), a non-profit educational corporation, deals with whether Test 21, a test of verbal ability developed by the U.S. Civil Service Commission and used by the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia to select police recruits, is sufficiently job-related to be legally permissible…