2002), believe that the assessment playing field is not level in terms of either attitudes toward or knowledge of tests on the part of students and teachers alike. Lewis (1997, 1999) made the point that standardized achievement and assessment tests are designed to measure the degree to which students have mastered curriculum, internalized concepts, and advanced cognitively in terms of problem-solving and other skills.
In discussing standardized testing and assessment, Salpeter and Foster (2000) commented that standardized tests are not necessarily a good way of measuring the things that educators want to measure. The majority of high stakes tests focus on multiple choice questions, leading many critics to worry that such tests emphasize the trivial and are inadequate as a measure of students' abilities to think and learn. Many tests are seen as focusing on higher order thinking skills, but it may be difficult or perhaps even impossible to effectively measure critical thinking skill
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