Читать книгу Child Development From Infancy to Adolescence - Laura E. Levine - Страница 146

You are probably familiar with standardized tests such as IQ tests and achievement tests. We standardize a test by administering it to large groups of children to establish norms. A norm is the average or typical performance of a child of a given age on the test. Once we have established the norms for a test, we can compare an individual child’s performance to the appropriate age norms to determine whether that child is performing at, above, or below the level of the average child of the same age. Standardized tests are also useful for assessing the effectiveness of programs and interventions. For example, the effectiveness of a prekindergarten program that provided a coaching system for literacy, language, and math skills was assessed using standardized tests of vocabulary, prereading skills, and early math skills (Weiland & Yoshikawa, 2013).

Standardized test: A test that is administered and scored in a standard or consistent way to all examinees.

Norm: Something that is average or typical such as the performance of an individual of a given age on a test.

Some standardized testing has been controversial because of concerns about the validity of these tests, that is, whether they actually measure what they say they are measuring. For example, critics have claimed that college entrance tests such as the SAT and the ACT are biased in a way that discriminates against certain groups of students. On average, men score higher than women on these tests; Asians/Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders and Whites score higher than Mexican Americans/Latinos or African Americans; and students from families with higher incomes score higher than students from families with lower incomes (FairTest, 2016). In response to concerns about possible bias, over 900 colleges have stopped using the SAT or ACT in admission decisions or have made them optional (FairTest, 2017). The American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association recommend that important educational decisions never depend on a single test score.

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Today over 900 colleges do not require the SAT or ACT for admission. True