Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us

by Koretz, Daniel M.

• ISBN13: 9780674035218
• ISBN10: 0674035216
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-09-15
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

How do you judge the quality of a school, a district, a teacher, a student? By the test scores, of course. Yet for all the talk, what educational tests can and canrs"t tell you, and how scores can be misunderstood and misused, remains a mystery to most. The complexities of testing are routinely ignored, either because they are unrecognized, or because they may be-well, complicated.Inspired by a popular Harvard course for students without an extensive mathematics background, Measuring Up demystifies educational testing-from MCAS to SAT to WAIS, with all the alphabet soup in between. Bringing statistical terms down to earth, Daniel Koretz takes readers through the most fundamental issues that arise in educational testing and shows how they apply to some of the most controversial issues in education today, from high-stakes testing to special education. He walks readers through everyday examples to show what tests do well, what their limits are, how easily tests and scores can be oversold or misunderstood, and how they can be used sensibly to help discover how much kids have learned.

Table of Contents

Prologue

If Only It Were So Simple

What Is a Test?

What We Measure: Just How Good Is the Sample?

The Evolution of American Testing

What Test Scores Tell Us about American Kids

What Influences Test Scores, or How Not to Pick a School

Error and Reliability: How Much We Don't Know What We're Talking About

Reporting Performance: Standards and Scales

Validity

Inflated Test Scores

Adverse Impact and Bias

Testing Students with Special Needs

Sensible Uses of Tests

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

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