Talk:Standardized test

--216.186.96.179 (talk) 16:26, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Archive of removed, unreferenced content

Comments

Shouldn't there be links to articles about specific standardized tests? 24.250.246.178rhesusman 13:06 UTC 16 April 2005

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Heck, this should be merged with the article Standardized testing. I'm going to flag it if no one objects.

Rhesusmanrhesusman 17:25 UTC 17 April 2005

I disagree they need to be merged. The question is which name should the resulting article have? The naming conventions don't seem to give any preference of a gerund form over a noun or vice versa. The subject "Test" should technically be about the test itself and "Testing" is technically about the application and use of the test, but I suppose either article could cover all the material to avoid overlap. Other factors include that this article has a much longer edit history, possibly meaning it is the more favored name, but also possibly it is just a better connected article. Anyone have good experience from other articles to guide this decision? I'm willing to do the merge if we agree on which way to do it. - Taxman 13:42, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

The cleanup task force is going to work on the other one, but I think this one needs cleanup more. I wouldn't have a problem with the two articles being fixed so they do indeed talk about separate things, such as one talking about the tests themselves and the other talking about such testing as a public policy. I myself don't care which outcome is chosen, so long as we don't have duplicate articles.

Rhesusman 17:30 UTC 17 April 2005

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"Value-added modeling has been proposed to cope with this criticism by statistically controlling for innate ability and out-of-school contextual factors." I believe "innate ability" should be replaced by something like "previous educational achievement". The value-added models I have seen often use a student's previous year test score or grade in the same subject area to set a baseline. But, the phrase as now worded suggests that IQ or ability test scores are used, and that is simply not feasible (nor, probably, fair). — Preceding unsigned comment added by RiverDesPeres (talk • contribs) 00:18, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Recent changes

See Talk:Standardized testing#Vagueness and lack of references for more info. Moved page to align with other pages on tests; for example, norm-referenced test and criterion-referenced test. Chris53516 16:06, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Edits by User:Sugarcaddy

I reverted the edits by this user not because it was necessarily bad, but because a lot of it was not in the style of an encyclopedia. Some of it was written like a newspaper article without citing its sources. Here are some of the sections:

This was placed right at the top, but it is not very relevant to the main content of this article. It sounds like it should be for a high-stakes testing article. This section is written like a newspaper article without citing its sources, especially the comments with the statements "outlawed" (by who?) and the second paragraph.

see main article High stakes testing

When such as test is used for an important consequence, such as grade promotion or awarding a high school diploma, it is called a high stakes test. Although IQ tests have been largely outlawed as unfairly penalizing minorities for use in educational decisions, some have started to question the ethics of using standards based tests which show similarly large or larger gaps between groups with differing education and income, despite design features to combat cultural bias (see below).

It is thought by education officials such as Terry Bergeson, the Superintendent of Public Instruction of Washington State, that attaching consequences will serve as an incentive so that all students will be expected to succeed, not just an artificial few at the top of a constructed bell curve. Students will not merely be passed onto the next grade for seat time, they will be expected to demonstrate student learning. Others such as Alfie Kohn question the fairness of penalizing populations who lack the advantages of parental education and income for merely scoring lower than the most advantaged ethnic groups. Education professor Don Orlich of Washington University has questioned the utility of released fourth grade mathematics questions that puzzle even college graduates.

Also, standardized tests are not all hand-scored. If you're going to add references, make sure the links work and that you actually provide an external reference. This article is also NOT about education reform, it's about testing.

Chris53516 13:21, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

No Culture-Free Tests for Intelligence

The article claims that no culture free intelligence tests exist. The Raven's Progressive Matrices are tests that are clearly culture free, and have been validated by testing in many different countries. I am going to change that point unless anyone has any objections. AmitDeshwar 03:59, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I object. Do you have evidence that it is culture free? It is very difficult to create a culture-free test. Language itself is cultural, and that is difficult to change to be culture free. I would only allow such a change if there was evicence to support your claim, and NOT the opinion of an organization or company. Chris53516 13:31, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The progressive matrices are completely non-verbal, so the "cultural language" charge is completely out of place. They're 3x3 grids with simple drawings (circles, shapes, lines, etc.) in them, and your task is to select the ninth picture according to whatever you think fits best. I'm in favor of including them. WhatamIdoing 21:02, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

I object too. Raven's Progressive Matrices are an attempt to minimise cultural bias in testing, but the tests must still take place within a cultural context and respond to certain proficiencies in the subject which are heavily influenced by culture. Worth a mention in the article, but without the unsupportable claim that they are 'culture free'.

Unreferenced material

I removed unreferenced content. You can find it here. -- Chris53516 13:56, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

But you're also removing content which is not incorrect. Easier to find here, add it back when you have references. If something is essentially correct, it's only neccesary to remove it if someone who believes it is incorrect challenges it. there is no point in challenging something just because there isn't a footnote for every sentence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sugarcaddy (talk • contribs)

This is NOT the place for article content. Do NOT re-add it. There does need to be a footnote for every new statement. The content of the paragraph I removed doesn't make any sense. First you wrote about how much someone can be paid to score a test, which I think is irrelevant to the topic, then you jump to how the tests are viewed by some group without citing any source for that claim. And all of this is under "Design." How does that make any sense? Chris53516 13:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

All of the following content is correct, but I don't have the time right now to put a citation on every sentence, or spend the effort or risk to counter challenge it. Does anybody have any contradicting information that would indicate that any of this is incorrect? An article that has a reference for every sentence looks very poor. Much of this such as No. 2 pencil should be of no challenge to anybody, so it should be edited, not reverted. --Sugarcaddy

This is NOT the place for disputed content. The history pages will show it. Furthermore, AS I SAID BEFORE, you do NOT need to cite something for every sentence. YOU DO NEED TO CITE SOMETHING FOR EVERY CLAIM. If you don't have time to add the content properly, then DON'T ADD IT AT ALL. Also, no one needs to provide counter-factual information. This is an encyclopedia, and in order for you to add content, you MUST have a source/citation. The defense of the content is on YOUR part, not on others. The part about a No. 2 pencil is ridiculous anyway--how is that relevant?? Chris53516 18:56, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Without specifically defending Sugarcaddy's edits, I'd just like to point out that if WP actually followed the policy Chris53516 is claiming, we'd have to completely blank a lot of pages, and remove a majority of the content. Indeed, the content that Chris insists on replacing Sugarcaddy's edits with is even less cited than Sugarcaddy's. Sure, I wish WP were more fully cited. But just blanking uncited content is not the answer. See Template:Fact/doc for a hierarchical list of procedures for handling uncited claims. /blahedo (t) 22:13, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. Most of this was speculative and speciously related. Quite frankly, I could care less if the rest of Wikipedia is uncited. I will defend those topics that are important to me by thwarting ridiculous edits. Chris53516 13:19, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

How is quoting from an investigative report by the Seattle Times unreferenced or speculative? --Sugarcaddy 19:28, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm sick of this. Who the hell cares how much test scorers are paid? Does the page on software development have the wages of software developers? Probably not! And why on Earth should it? It's IRRELEVANT. Chris53516 20:14, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Possible new source

I thought that the information at this website might be useful for expanding this article. It seems to be pretty boringly straightforward, instead of agenda-oriented. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:05, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Right/Wrong Answers

A funny thought I had on the example of the sugar cube. I read this whole thing sequentially: i.e. Put a cube of sugar in, then cut it in half (inside the cup). I may have answered it correctly (more surface area would mean more could dissolve in less time), but I took longer to consider it, due to having to puzzle over what the sequence was and whether that was important in the process. That could be critical to a timed test. MarchHare (talk) 19:20, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I suspect that they were trying to eliminate the problem that is obvious to anyone who has actually cut a sugar cube: The sugar crumbles. They didn't want "There is less sugar in the cup (because most of it is still on the counter top)" to be a plausible answer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:57, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

a question

I was wondering why no one has likned the tests to how the education system is ran. There has been reference to the fact the tests may not be the best judge of performance however, I believe there is a bigger issue at hand. I have heard countless stories/ seen many children not know basic information they should have learned in school. I feel this is due to the fact teachers are gearing their lesson plans toward passing test as opposed to actually teaching information. I am not saying all teachers do this, I am just stating the ones who do are adding to the problem. Teachers are encouraged to teach strategies to pass tests and I believe a good portion of students are recieveing a great injuctice from this style of teaching.--Lilmisssponge (talk) 05:14, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

That is not a problem with the test, but with the syllabus (or rather, misunderstanding of it by teachers). If this "basic information" is so important, why is it not on the test, especially when the test is designed by educators? And a deeper problem is that 99% of teachers don't know the first thing about testing. You're right, these are important issues, but the reason they should not be discussed in this article is because it is a general treatment of standardized testing, of which American K-12 testing is but a tiny fraction. It's already biased towards that fraction.Iulus Ascanius (talk) 13:51, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

This misunderstanding has apparently resulted in some classes doing poorly on these tests. The teacher thinks, "Oh, it will all be simple arithmetic, so I won't bother teaching anything else" -- and then the test turns out to require complex applications of mathematics skills, to the teacher's astonishment and the students' frustration.

Test-taking strategies boost some students' confidence and slightly increase the speed that some students' work at, but there are no test-taking strategies that will allow a student who can't read or do basic arithmetic to figure out the answer to a three-step story problem. They have their place, but their place is necessarily small -- and I suspect that if you looked at the amount of time dedicated to teaching test-taking strategies to students over the course of an entire year, you'd find that it received less than 1% of the time (which is to say: less than half the time middle-class elementary school students in America spend eating cupcakes and other junk food for birthday/holiday celebrations during what are supposed to be instructional hours). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:55, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

A claim which isn't true

"The opposite of a standardized test is a non-standardized test." This isn't true. A standardized test is an standardized assessment of students. The opposite of a standardized assessment is a non-standardized non-assessment, ie doing nothing at all to determine student learning. Davidwees (talk) 14:24, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Really? So when the teacher goes around the room, and orally asks each student a different question, perhaps deliberately selecting harder questions for the more advanced students, and easier ones for those who struggle, then the teacher is "doing nothing at all" to determine whether the students learned the material?

At any rate, if you want to include such a statement in the article, then you would have to provide a citation to a reliable source that supports your belief. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:58, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

What I mean is, you should consider both the opposite of the word "standardized" and the word "test" when considering the opposite of "standardized test." Another example would be using a rubric for assessment, or self-assessment, or oral assessment, or a million other types of "non-standardized assessments." --Davidwees (talk) 05:55, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

This is a UScentric article

As a teacher in New Zealand, I will point out that this article, while informative on standardised testing, only takes into account the perspective of the US/does not identify where various practices are based. For example, standardised tesing in NZ is predominatly marked by PEOPLE not by machines. This needs to be corrected thanks --203.97.52.166 (talk) 21:22, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

You have the ability to edit the article to improve it. Don't just complain about it do something about it. ~~ GB fan ~~ ^talk 21:28, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Intelligence Citations Bibliography for Articles Related to IQ Testing

I have posted a bibliography of Intelligence Citations for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human intelligence and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library at a university with an active research program in those issues (and to another library that is one of the ten largest public library systems in the United States) and have been researching these issues since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research and to suggest new sources to me by comments on that page. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 20:06, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Possible Merger

There is some overlap between this article and Test. I wonder if there would be greater benefits if both articles were merged as a single piece. Any thoughts? mezzaninelounge (talk) 20:00, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

An article with this title ought to be much broader in scope, including tests that aren't given to students in school. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 21:12, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

That may not be a bad idea. Perhaps we should put a banner soon to suggest a merger. mezzaninelounge (talk) 23:02, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I am correctly understanding your latest comment. What would you like to see happen to this article, and to any other article you have in mind? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 02:17, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I would like to suggest a merger of this article with the test (assessment) article. There is considerable overlap between the two articles with respect to standardized testing, test construction, and education. Moreover, as you rightly pointed out, standardized tests are also used for purposes other than education. As it stands, there are currently two articles on the same subject. One describes at length on the history and current practice (mainly U.S.) of using standardized testing in education while the other discusses tests in general, which also includes standardized testing in education and its history. I am not sure if this is the best wiki form given. I am also not opposed to keeping them separate. I just think it is quite redundant keeping them separate. Plus there is another article called "educational assessment," which also covers similar issues. But unlike these two articles, it is not clear what the education article is trying to accomplish or convey. mezzaninelounge (talk) 17:43, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. I am observer of (not a party to, I'm glad to say) a Wikipedia Arbitration Committee case just now, so I'm unusually busy. Please remind me in a while, on my user talk page, to check what other articles are already on Wikipedia about related subjects, so that we can discuss how to divide content among those articles. I will continue watching this page, and invite other editors to comment on your thoughtful suggestion while I am busy, so that we make a good decision together. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 23:55, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Weiji, sounds like a plan. I will post a note on your discussion page within 5 days (August 25). No rush. :) mezzaninelounge (talk) 15:24, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that's such a good idea. There's so much to be said specifically about standardized testing that it might overwhelm the non-standardized or everyday notions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:47, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Merging in sub-articles

We have a pair of sub-articles that are unfortunately US-focused and possibly WP:POVFORKs: Standardized testing and public policy and Standardized testing and its effects. I think we should merge them into this page. What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:47, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

This doesn't seem right

a standardized test is a test that is given and scored the same way? Is that all that is meant by the term?? it doesn't seem right. Is there something missing here, or is it me? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.34.148.156 (talk) 19:05, 13 June 2011 (UTC)