Test Policy and Test Performance: Education, Language, and Culture (Evaluation in Education and Human Services, 23)

Bernard R. Gifford In the United States, the standardized test has become one of the major sources of information for reducing uncertainty in the determination of individual merit and in the allocation of merit-based educational, training, and employment opportunities. Most major institutions of higher education require applicants to supplement their records of academic achievements with scores on standardized tests. Similarly, in the workplace, as a condition of employment or assignment to training programs, more and more employers are requiring prospective employees to sit for standardized tests. In short, with increasing frequency and intensity, individual members of the political economy are required to transmit to the opportunity marketplace scores on standardized examinations that purport to be objective measures of their abilities, talents, and potential. In many instances, these test scores are the only signals about their skills that job applicants are permitted to send to prospective employers. THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TESTING AND PUBLIC POLICY In view of the importance of these issues to our current national agenda, it was proposed that the Human Rights and Governance and the Education and Culture Programs of the Ford Foundation support the establishment of a ''blue ribbon" National Commission on Testing and Public Policy to investigate some of the major problems, as well as the untapped opportunities, created by recent trends in the use of standardized tests, particularly in the workplace and in schools. Front Matter....Pages i-xii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Mandated Tests: Educational Reform or Quality Indicator?....Pages 3-23 Student Achievement Tests as Tools of Educational Policy: Practices and Consequences....Pages 25-50 Making Sense of School Testing....Pages 51-62 The Irish Study Revisited....Pages 63-89 Front Matter....Pages 91-91 Using Test Scores for Decision Making....Pages 93-113 If Not Tests, Then What?....Pages 115-121 Advice to the Commission....Pages 123-126 Front Matter....Pages 127-127 Aspects of Differential Performance by Minorities on Standardized Tests: Linguistic and Sociocultural Factors....Pages 129-181 Ethnic Group Differences in the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) Performance of American Youth: Implications for Career Prospects....Pages 183-206 Testing Bilingual Proficiency for Specialized Occupations: Issues and Implications....Pages 207-229 Informal Assessment of Asian Americans: A Cultural and Linguistic Mismatch?....Pages 231-257 Black and White Cultural Styles in Pluralistic Perspective....Pages 259-296 Back Matter....Pages 297-306