good morning and welcome to the dantes workshop each of you can make a difference by helping service members and your command meet their educational goals the job of e s o is not simply handing out some brochures and supervising some tests done well it can make a lasting impression on all who enter your office you're the vital link to educational benefits for service members and your command these men and women will look to you for expertise and guidance in developing an educational plan to best meet their goals they options are met a traditional classroom programs and nontraditional programs offered outside the classroom maybe mixed and matched to create an educational plan tailored to the individual's goals no let's look at one nontraditional program that is widely used by both military and civilian personnel the program college cre by examination is offered to all military personnel by dantes the defense activity for nontraditional education support these tests provide a way to document college level learning usually gained outside the classroom dantes offers three major college credit examination program the college level examination program clip for short offers both general and subject tests the clip general exams cover material normally found in the first or second year of college the class subject exams cover over forty different subject areas the click tests are primarily multiple choice time to examine although there are some tests with optional essay components bypassing one of these subject s a service member may earn three to six semester hours of college credit another program through which service members can earn college credit for specific subject areas is the american college testing proficiency examination program or act pepper shored act up to the are most often timed multiple choice exams however if you are essay in nature pap tests measure one's knowledge of a subject and their ability to apply and use that knowledge the final credit by examination program is the dantes subject standardized test or d s s ts the s like the others are multiple choice test the big difference they are untimed you generally earn three semester hours of credit if you pass the d s s tazer particularly good for service members who prefer test without time constraints these are the study guides and fact sheets available for each college credit test offered by dantes let's look at one fact this is a d f t faqih for psychology test it gives test information such as the number of questions on the test and the minimum number of correct responses needed to pass the test and also recommends that the test candidate contact the institution where they expect to receive credit to determine if the school will accept the test results and verify the score required i thought these tests were standardized and if you passed you got the credits generally that's true but the college or university has the option of requiring a higher or lower passing score to award credit that's why it's so important to be sure that the selected institution will accept the test results and k next on the fact she we have the content specifications section a list of the topics covered on the examination and the percentage of questions in each topic and subtopic area by percentage of questions do you mean how important that area will be  exactly for example on this psychology exam lifespan development comprises four to six percent and social emotional and personality development comprise thirty five to forty percent so there will be a lot more questions on social and personality development then our life span development run right but that doesn't mean you should advise your clients to ignore life span development when preparing for the test rather tell them to use this information as a study guide obviously they need to spend significantly more time when preparing on social emotional and personality development and on life span development the next section on the fact sheet is referenced publications this section lists books that will be helpful when preparing for the test it also recommends reviewing more than one book to cover all the content areas it's a good idea to review effective study techniques with your client what study tips do you find effective anyone read the book and take notes s out a certain time each day to study and do it every day use the content specifications section as a guide to determine how to divvy up your time ok the next section on the fact sheet sample questions the sample questions give the student a good idea of what the real test questions will be lined out of the sample question taken from the actual tests no but they are indicative of the actual questions you can tell your clients that while these exact questions won't be on the examination they take the form and content of the questions will be similar let's look at the technical information and norming statistics sections these sections will provide some insight into normed and the make up of the norman group please explain what you mean by norms in order to be able to award credit for an examination the users of the test colleges and universities must be sure that the test has validity validity is the extent to which the test measures what it is intended to measure the test must be reliable scores should be accurate and consistent to measure these characteristics and to help develop a passing score the test is norm given to a norman group what's a moment in the case of a college level examination such as a d s s to a a norman group is a group of college and university students who are completing or who recently completed a course in the test subject the colleges and universities are large and small private and state and are located throughout the united states notice the section credit recommendations this section tells you that the american council on education has reviewed the dantes program and recommends among other things how many credits a school male ward if you pass the test and what the passing score is what do you mean may or credit i thought you pass you get remember what i said earlier each service member must check with the institution from which they hope to get credit to be sure the school will accept the results of a particular exam also the institution may establish its own passing score requirement under credit recommendations it says that credit may be awarded for a standard score of forty seven or fifty four correct responses what is a standard score and is fifty four correct answers always passing all tests in the dantes program are reported in terms of standard scores not correct answers on this particular test to achieve a standard score of forty seven a student has to get fifty four correct responses what do you use a standard score in this example the role score the number of questions answered correctly does not permit comparisons of candidates performance from one examination to another because the number of questions may vary from examination to examination as well as the level of difficulty of the questions so you have to test forms a and b on the same subject test a has one hundred fifteen questions the other test the one hundred fifty five the same person taking both tests gets seventy questions right on test day and passes and ninety right on test b and fails it now they come to you and they want to know why they may even think that there was something wrong with the test what do you tell them apples and oranges two different tests that can't be compared yes  through the use of an algebraic formula raw scores can be converted to standard scores standard scores allow you to compare test scores from different test forms it's much easier to understand when you look at it on a normal curve normal curve was developed early in the nineteenth century by a belgian named add off cat he noted that if you measured in weight soldiers they fell into a pattern some were big and some were small but most were in the middle since catalyze time studies have shown that most things of the same type have a similar pattern of distribution when for example if you took all the soldiers in the world and measured them a graph showing those measurements would look like this normal or bell curve small and big soldiers at each end with the largest number of soldiers in the middle test scores are when you graph them they usually fall into a normal curve here in the middle is where most people scores will fall to pass our client scores generally need to fall in this remember our example test a had one hundred fifteen questions test to be one hundred fifty five when the tests for norms of the raw scores ranged from thirty six to one hundred two on test day and from fifty five to one hundred thirty nine on test b this range of raw scores is called the frequency of distribution in order to develop a fair and accurate passing score the test of elevators take the scores of the c students and compute their mean or average score this mean becomes the passing score requirement and student scoring below this means fail the test and students scoring above pass the average or mean of the c students for test a is sixty nine and for test the ninety seven you compute the average or mean score by simply totalling up all the c student scores and dividing by the number of c students in the norming group remember the raw scores are used in an algebraic formula to develop a standard score scale the standard score scales range from twenty to eighty with a mean a fifty and a standard deviation or score dispersion of ten i know this is hard to understand but in other words from raw scores test developers compute standard scores which are used to compare the test results of different forms of the same test ok what else do we need to know in order to tell our client why they passed one test and fail the other to figure out how well our client did we need to know how their score compared to those of the norming group anyone remember what we are trying to figure out here why the client got seventy correct answers on one test and passed it and nani correct on another form of the same test infield the answer is the norm in group for test the had a mean or average of ninety seven while the mean for test day was sixty nine so our client did better than average on  and more us than average on b what does all this really mean it means our client has to do some more studying in order to pass test b it also means that our client is very close to passing now and more correct answers are all that is needed to pass know if the client gets seventy correct answers on both to asked for test a that's a passing score for chest b that's very low on the scale well that about wraps up the facts she now lets look at the score report for in most cases the score report forms are sent to us the test administrator approximately three to six weeks after the test date a form like this will be used to report the results of the clip general and subject exams and all d s s ts the act up form looks like this both contain similar information examinees name date of test name of test and the results subject exams and the d s s ts are reported on a standard scale of twenty to eighty two grading systems are used to evaluate active happy examinations standard scores from twenty to eighty for multiple choice tests and pass or fail for essay test clips general exams are reported on a standard score scale of two hundred to eight hundred you need to be able to interpret the score report for your client now what we learned earlier about standard scores will be very useful weight the standard score by itself is meaningless we need to be able to compare it to a percentile ranks exactly right so let's take the akpap form first and turn it over on the back is interpreted in for me and a comparison of standard scores and percentile ranks so if our client received a standard score of sixty they're in the eighty fourth percentile which means they did better than eighty four percent of the norman group and that's pretty good so if they scored  sixteenth percentile and only did better than sixteen percent of the norming group right that's right what is the passing score very good question remember the section on the fact sheet that lists the recommended passing score from the american council on education this nationally recognized agency recommends forty five as the minimum passing standard score on the act pap tests michael steinberg scores forty was pretty close to passing so should i tell him to study some more and try to do examinations who scores are more than one standard deviation below the recommended passing score should probably be encouraged to either participate in a formal program of instruction or to engage in a serious program of preparation prior to retaking the test what are the recommended passing scores for the clip and d s s to exams on the class subject exams and the d s s tase a standard score of between forty one and fifty three depending on the test is considered passing on the club general exams four hundred twenty one is considered passing this booklet clept what your score means comes with every score report it contains a wealth of information study it it will help you and your client understand the test scores the percentile ranks for the clip general and subject exams are contained in this booklet as well as grade equivalents for the club subject exams ok our time is almost up so let's review what we've discussed today the credit by examination program offers the chance to transform experience and college level learning gained outside the classroom and to college credit there are three major credit by examination programs the class general and subject exams the act passed exams and the d s s p s a fact sheet or study guide is available for each test and contains important information on test information content specifications reference publications sample questions credit recommendations technical information and statistics a score report form will be sent to you as the test administrator when you receive it call your client and schedule an appointment to discuss the result the job of the e s o will be one of the most challenging and rewarding duties of your career done well it can make a lasting impression on all the men and women who seek your help each of you can make a difference in their lives by helping them to make the grade