Put to the Test
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The big pedagogic picture of Put to the Test is that it is a reality check on what Bracey analyzes as the blind faith that has been put in standardized-test scores as far as predicting the academic success or failure of students is concerned. Bracey begins by with the assertion that tests have proliferated far beyond their ability to serve useful educational purposes and that they carry much more weight in steering educators, parents, and students toward student career paths than they should, compared to the importance of general educational objectives. But they are used to track students academically, to determine whether teachers should keep their jobs, to determine whether students should graduate (Bracey, 1998, p. 1).Far from providing a reliable measure of either students' potential or their academic proficiency, standardized tests all too often serve the educational/pedagogical assumptions of test originators on one hand or the agendas of policy makers on the other. The fact that annual aggregate SAT scores, as well as the so-called "nation's report card," are routinely publicized by the mass media is especially instructive in this regard. Bracey describes a certain disconnect between increased use of standardized tests (psychometrics) and the ubiquitous media visibility that they have on one hand, and a realistic grasp of "how tests can or ought to be used" in the educational setting (1998, p. 4) on the other. Old-fashioned classroom quizzes may actually be a more u
. . .
l out of favor, except in one area--measuring minimum competencies, as in verbal, math, or teacher competencies.
Performance tests (assessments), a.k.a. "authentic tests," are a version of CRT that "directly measures the performance the assessor is interested in" (p. 26), such as music auditions, writing, sports tryouts, or group problem-solving challenges. They may call for application f critical-thinking skills. But they more expensive and time-consuming than multiple-choice tests, which are thus likely to "continue to flourish" (p. 29).
Bracey describes different kinds of "normal curve" test-score interpretation: percentiles, normal curve equivalents, the SAT scale, and stanines (short for "standard nines"), which divide the normal curve into nine segments that distribute 100% of all scorers to the left and right of an average middle that accounts for 54% (not 50%) of all scores, thus:
Stanine:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Percentage
4
7
12
17
20
17
12
7
4
What is important about each of these measures (Bracey is especially critical of stanines) is that their gauge lines show different scales. In practical terms, depending on the psychometric, what is "average" by one measure might be above
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2109
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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