Which of the following is required when administering a standardized assessment?

Standardized testing has practically become a tradition within the American school system.But why? How did standardized assessment become such a big part of education? How does it really work?

Standardized tests are designed by experts and come with explicit instructions for administering them. They are taken by a large quantity of learners under the same conditions. Questions, administration, and scoring are consistent for every evaluated group. These tests are generally norm-referenced tests, meaning that the performance of each test taker is measured against the norm of the group. Norms can only be determined comparatively, by having other groups of students take the test and comparing results.

Test data are analyzed and prepared by a group of experts in the field. First, the experts write questions that an average student should be able to answer about a certain subject. This set of questions is then given to a representative group of students, and the results are analyzed for consistency. The information retrieved from these tests will become norm-group data for the level of knowledge and the subject in question. It will be repeated for each subject and relevant subject according to federal policies. Experts will prepare a test manual so that administrators of the tests can familiarize themselves with directions for administering and scoring.

Teachers should understand scoring, calculating, and percentile norms of standardized tests,because they may get questions from students and parents. Standardized test results generally include a percentile norm (one of the values of a variable that divides the distribution of the variable into 100 groups having equal frequencies). A percentile rank of 80 indicates that 80% of the norm population performed below par and 20% performed better than the norm group. The norm group is a representative group that the students being tested are being ranked against comparatively. This takes place in norm-referenced testing. There are also age ranks; that is, how the student performed according to the standards for their age.

Standardized tests are generally designed to survey policy compliance or student achievement across the country or internationally. This is possible because of the consistency of the procedures and the availability of the norm-group data (generated by statistics experts). Most commonly, standardized tests are used to measure knowledge in specific areas such as math, reading, and social studies. These are known as achievement tests. Standardized tests can also be used as placement tests to understand a student’s mastery of certain skills and therefore categorize the student appropriately. Some tests in the psychology field assess personality traits, aptitudes, or abilities; IQ tests would be an example of these.

As a teacher, you’ll need to remember that standardized tests can lead to oversimplifying a complex situation. For instance, when comparing the performance of two classes, consider variables other than the level of achievement. You shouldn’t draw conclusions without further investigation; poor performance could be explained by other influencing factors, such as your lack of training to handle the group. Moreover, some doubt may be cast on the validity of results, because they may not measure what was taught or may not be aligned with the class objectives for the year. And some students may have trouble answering these tests due to lack of background vocabulary or lack of experience.

Standardized tests have adopted a statistical model, called the bell curve, to help analyze the results. The use of normal distribution is applied to the scores, which can be visualized as a bell-shaped curve. The significance of the bell shape is that it indicates that most results will fall between two values on either side of the mean. The mean is a mathematical average of a group of scores, giving a value that is representative of the overall scores. Very few values will be found greatly above or greatly below the mean. On a bell-shape graph, these areas are known as the “tails” of the graph. A narrow bell-shape indicates a low standard deviation; in other words, the values of the scores did not deviate greatly from the mean. A wide bell shape indicates a high standard deviation, or that the scores varied widely from the value of the mean. Taking 1 standard deviation on either side of the mean will allow you to obtain the scores of the majority of the test takers.

Standardized assessment has a huge impact not just on your students’ futures, but on your school’s future, too. Make sure you thoroughly understand the levels of performance your students need to achieve, and what it is you need to do to help them get there.

While standardized tests are a major source of debate in the United States, many test experts and educators consider them to be a fair and objective method of assessing the academic achievement of students, mainly because the standardized format, coupled with computerized scoring, reduces the potential for favoritism, bias, or subjective evaluations. On the other hand, subjective human judgment enters into the testing process at various stages—e.g., in the selection and presentation of questions, or in the subject matter and phrasing of both questions and answers. Subjectivity also enters into the process when test developers set passing scores—a decision that can affect how many students pass or fail, or how many achieve a level of performance considered to be “proficient.” For more detailed discussions of these issue, see measurement error, test accommodations, test bias and score inflation.

Standardized tests may be used for a wide variety of educational purposes. For example, they may be used to determine a young child’s readiness for kindergarten, identify students who need special-education services or specialized academic support, place students in different academic programs or course levels, or award diplomas and other educational certificates. The following are a few representative examples of the most common forms of standardized test:

• Achievement tests are designed to measure the knowledge and skills students learned in school or to determine the academic progress they have made over a period of time. The tests may also be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a schools and teachers, or identify the appropriate academic placement for a student—i.e., what courses or programs may be deemed most suitable, or what forms of academic support they may need. Achievement tests are “backward-looking” in that they measure how well students have learned what they were expected to learn.
• Aptitude tests attempt to predict a student’s ability to succeed in an intellectual or physical endeavor by, for example, evaluating mathematical ability, language proficiency, abstract reasoning, motor coordination, or musical talent. Aptitude tests are “forward-looking” in that they typically attempt to forecast or predict how well students will do in a future educational or career setting. Aptitude tests are often a source of debate, since many question their predictive accuracy and value.
• College-admissions tests are used in the process of deciding which students will be admitted to a collegiate program. While there is a great deal of debate about the accuracy and utility of college-admissions tests, and many institutions of higher education no longer require applicants to take them, the tests are used as indicators of intellectual and academic potential, and some may consider them predictive of how well an applicant will do in postsecondary program.
• International-comparison tests are administered periodically to representative samples of students in a number of countries, including the United States, for the purposes of monitoring achievement trends in individual countries and comparing educational performance across countries. A few widely used examples of international-comparison tests include the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).
• Psychological tests, including IQ tests, are used to measure a person’s cognitive abilities and mental, emotional, developmental, and social characteristics. Trained professionals, such as school psychologists, typically administer the tests, which may require students to perform a series of tasks or solve a set of problems. Psychological tests are often used to identify students with learning disabilities or other special needs that would qualify them for specialized services.

Reform

Following a wide variety of state and federal laws, policies, and regulations aimed at improving school and teacher performance, standardized achievement tests have become an increasingly prominent part of public schooling in the United States. When focused on reforming schools and improving student achievement, standardized tests are used in a few primary ways:

• To hold schools and educators accountable for educational results and student performance. In this case, test scores are used as a measure of effectiveness, and low scores may trigger a variety of consequences for schools and teachers. For a more detailed discussion see high-stakes test.
• To evaluate whether students have learned what they are expected to learn, such as whether they have met state learning standards. In this case, test scores are seen as a representative indicator of student achievement.
• To identify gaps in student learning and academic progress. In this case, test scores may be used, along with other information about students, to diagnose learning needs so that educators can provide appropriate services, instruction, or academic support.
• To identify achievement gaps among different student groups, including students of color, students who are not proficient in English, students from low-income households, and students with physical or learning disabilities. In this case, exposing and highlighting achievement gaps may be seen as an essential first step in the effort to educate all students well, which can lead to greater public awareness and changes in educational policies and programs.
• To determine whether educational policies are working as intended. In this case, elected officials and education policy makers may rely on standardized-test results to determine whether their laws and policies are working or not, or to compare educational performance from school to school or state to state. They may also use the results to persuade the public and other elected officials that their policies are in the best interest of children and society.

Debate

While debates about standardized testing are wide-ranging, nuanced, and sometimes emotionally charged, many debates tend to be focused on the ways in which the tests are used, and whether they present reliable or unreliable evaluations of student learning, rather than on whether standardized testing is inherently good or bad (although there is certainly debate on this topic as well). Most test developers and testing experts, for example, caution against using standardized-test scores as an exclusive measure of educational performance, although many would also contend that test scores can be a valuable indicator of performance if used appropriately and judiciously. Generally speaking, standardized testing is more likely to become an object of debate and controversy when test scores are used to make consequential decisions about educational policies, schools, teachers, and students. The tests are less likely to be contentious when they are used to diagnose learning needs and provide students with better services—although the line separating these two purposes is notoriously fuzzy in practice (thus, the ongoing debates).

While an exhaustive discussion of standardized-testing debates is beyond the scope of this resource, the following questions will illustrate a few of the major issues commonly discussed and debated in the United States:

What are 3 important points to remember when giving a standardized test?

Which steps are necessary for test standardization?

Which of the following is an example of a standardized assessment?

What is considered a standardized assessment?