Title: Defending standardized testing /
Authors: Phelps, Richard P.
Publisher: L. Erlbaum Associates,
Year: 2005
Subjects: Achievement tests United States; Education Standards United States; Educational accountability United States.
Abstract: Everyone invested in the success of American education, from parents to policymakers, are affected by or concerned about educational testing. The education reform movement of the past 15 years has focused on raising academic standards. Some standards advocates attach a testing mechanism to gauge the extent to which high standards are actually accomplished. On the other hand, some critics view the push for standards and testing as precisely what ails American education. They view testing generally as an impediment to reform, an antiquated technology that reflects an antiquated view of teaching, learning, and social organization, and perpetuates inequality. At the same time, the testing profession has produced advances in the format, accuracy, dependability, and utility of tests. Never before has obtaining such an abundance of accurate and useful information about student learning been possible.^
Contents: Persistently positive : forty years of public opinion on standardized testing / Richard P. Phelps -- High-stakes testing : contexts, characteristics, critiques, and consequences / Gregory J. Cizek -- The rich, robust research literature on testing's achievement benefits / Richard P. Phelps -- Some misconceptions about large-scale educational assessments / Dean Goodman and Ronald K. Hambleton -- The most frequently unasked questions about testing / Stephen G. Sireci -- Must high stakes mean low quality? Some testing program implementation issues / George K. Cunningham -- Whose rules? The relation between the "rules" and "law" of testing / Chad W. Buckendahl and Robert Hunt -- Teaching for the test : how and why test preparation is appropriate / Linda Crocker -- Doesn't everybody know that 70% is passing? / Barbara S. Plake -- The testing industry, ethnic minorities, and individuals with disabilities / Kurt F. Geisinger -- A school accountability case study : California API awards and the Orange County register margin of error folly / David Rogosa -- Leave no standardized test behind / Mary Lyn Bourque -- Appendix A : Polls and surveys that have included items about standardized testing : 1954 to present -- Appendix B : Some studies revealing testing achievement benefits, by methodology type.