Preparing Students To Take Standardized Achievement Tests

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2. Legal And Professional Bases For Licensure Testing

In this chapter the author presents the legal setting for licensure testing, I discusses the role of various professional standards and codes (i.e., the EEOC Uniform Guidelines, 1978, and the AERA/APA/NCME Standards, 1985), presents some of the pertinent rulings from several court decisions, and makes inferences about future changes in professional standards and their potential impact on licensure test development. There necessarily is some minor overlap with the material in this chapter and some other chapters in this book. There is a brief discussion of the differences between licensure, certification. and employment testing and how those differences relate to the professional standards and court cases. It is necessary to mention some concepts such as task analysis, validity, and cut scores when discussing the professional standards and the court cases. However, these concepts are not dealt with in the depth that occurs in later chapters. THE LEGAL SETTING Licensure and certification tests are high-stakes tests and those considering using or constructing such tests should be aware of previous case law regarding such testing. Some generic legal issues are discussed first. In subsequent sections, the various professional standards and some court decisions are presented. Generic Legal Issues Existing case law is based on constitutional requirements- primarily the 14th Amendment- and statutory requirements- primarily Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Constitutional Requirements: The 14th Amendment Two basic requirements of the U.S. Constitution\u27s 14th Amendment are discussed: equal protection and due process. For a plaintiff to win under the equal protection analysis, it must be shown that there was intent to discriminate. In Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. (1977) , the court stated that the following factors could be considered in establishing discriminatory intent: (a) historical background, (b) the specific sequence of events leading up to the challenged decision, (c) departures from normal procedural sequences, and (d) the legislative or administrative history. Nevertheless, to prove discriminatory intent, one court has ruled that it must be shown that the user of the test selected or reaffirmed a particular course of action at least in part \u27 because of\u27 not merely \u27in spite of,\u27 its adverse effects upon an identifiable group (Personnel Administrator v. Feeney, 1979, at 4656). Another court has stated that:An action does not violate the equal protection clause simply because the decision maker knows that it wi ll have a disparate impact on racial or ethnic groups. (United States v. LULAC, 1986, p. 646) It is difficult to prove intent. As a consequence, most plaintiffs would prefer basing their cases on the Civil Rights Acts, which do not require proof of discriminatory motive. The due process provisions of the Constitution relate to substantive and procedural due process. Substantive due process requires a legitimate relationship between a requirement and the purpose. This legitimate relationship is easier to establish than the business necessity requirement of the Civil Rights Acts. In fact, for licensure and certification challenges Herbsleb, Sales, and Overcast (1985) concluded that: the rationality standard is so lenient that we were unable to find a single case where an examination was successfully challenged on this basis. (p. 1169) Procedural due process requires fairness in the way things are done. In testing cases, this means that there must be advance notice of the requirement, an opportunity for hearings/appeals, and that the hearings must be conducted fairly. A licensure or certification testing program should not be implemented without paying careful attention to these procedures. It should be pointed out that if a plaintiff wins on procedural grounds, he/she does not necessarily get a license. However, some additional procedure- such as a hearing- must be applied

4. Assessing the Quality of Teacher Assessment Tests

This chapter discusses some of the types of evidences that are appropriate for assessing the quality of teacher-licensure tests. Licensure tests are used to make dichotomous decisions, so reliability estimates of the consistency of decisions are needed. Because the inference of interest has to do with the minimum competency necessary to prevent harm from coming to the clients, it is argued that content validity is the type of validity evidence most appropriate for licensure tests. However, evidences for criterion-related validity, construct validity and curricular validity are also discussed. The issue of whether the cut score on a licensure test should in any way be related to the supply and demand and the requirements for reporting test scores and documenting the quality of the test are also discussed. It is concluded that teacher-licensure tests allow valid inferences for a delimited set of inferences. An effective teacher-licensure test will not eliminate the need for subsequent teacher evaluation; it will not cure all educational ills; and it will not eliminate all ineffective teachers. Nevertheless, it should help ensure that those individuals who are licensed have a minimal level of competence on some important sub domains of knowledge and skills relevant to their profession. ASSESSING THE QUALITY OF TEACHER ASSESSMENT TESTS Scott wontpass in his assignment at all, he had a poem to learn and he fell tu do it. (Time, 1980) If selection of the most suitable people to be teachers is a matter of importance to the five percent of the population who become teachers, it is no less important a matter to the 100 percent who become students. (Pratt, 1977, p . 16) If education is the cornerstone upon which a great nation builds, then teaching is our most important human activity. (Sweeney & Manatt, 1986, p. 446) It seems so obvious. Quality education is important to the nation. Quality teachers are important for quality education. But historically not all who received licenses to teach were of high quality-or necessarily even competent. We do not want incompetent teachers. Licensure tests are used in over 900 other occupations in an effort to protect the public, and in those occupations the public typically has a choice of whom to go to for services. Teachers have conscripted clients. Licensure tests should be able to weed out prospective teachers with skills at a level such as that demonstrated in the first of the preceding quotations. Isn\u27t it obvious licensure tests should be useful in a profession as important as teaching? But things are not always as obvious as they seem. What is teacher competency? How do we know whether tests really measure it? Such questions should be, and have been, asked. This chapter is intended to take a close look at several issues regarding the quality of teacher-competency tests. A general conclusion of the paper is that if such tests are constructed properly they will be of sufficiently high quality to be valid for a delimited set of inferences

Education Policy Analysis Archives Volume 6 Number 13 Consequences of Assessment: What is the Evidence?

Abstract Attention is here directed toward the prevalence of large scale assessments (focusing primarily on state assessments). I examine the purposes of these assessment programs; enumerate both potential dangers and benefits of such assessments; investigate what the research evidence says about assessment consequences (including a discussion of the quality of the evidence); discuss how to evaluate whether the consequences are good or bad; present some ideas about what variables may influence the probabilities for good or bad consequences; and present some tentative conclusions about the whole issue of the consequences of assessment and the amount of evidence available and needed

Measurement and evaluation in education and psychology

xiv, 658 p. : ill. ; 25 cm

Education research reading in focus

xii, 433 p.; 21 cm

Standardized tests in education

xi+333hlm.;23c