Download or read book Test Policy and the Politics of Opportunity Allocation The Workplace and the Law written by Bernard R. Gifford and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 and potential. In many instances, these test scores are the abilities, talents, 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.
Download or read book Test Policy and the Politics of Allocation written by Bernard R. Gifford and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Policy Issues in Employment Testing written by Linda C. Wing and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linda C. Wing and Bernard R. Gifford How should a society committed to the ideas of individual merit, equal opportunity, and the free marketplace allocate scarce educational and employment opportunities? How can that society draw distinctions fairly and justifiably-among people competing against each other for the same opportunity? These are among the central questions of a democracy. How a society answers them reveals a great deal about its values and its priorities, and determines a great deal about its future course. In recent decades, we have placed the standardized pencil-and-paper test at the center of these fundamental questions about the nature of opportunity allocation in American life. In more and more areas of our lives-schools, employment, the military-we rely upon the standardized test to rank or classify people, and to assure ourselves that we have done so fairly. The papers gathered here were prepared at the invitation of the National Commission on Testing and Public Policy. (The editors of this volume were involved in the commission from its inception in 1987 until shortly after the publication of its major public report in 1990-Bernard Gifford as Chair and Linda Wing as Associate Director. 1) Each chapter focuses on an aspect of employment testing-a topic that could hardly 1 POLICY ISSUES IN EMPLOYMENT TESTING 2 be more in need of calm deliberation and reasoned discussion than it is today.
Download or read book Intelligence Policy written by Angela Browne-Miller and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author examines the numerous facets of 'implicit intelligence policies'those unspoken directives that often profoundly influence social and educational policies-and their impact on policies regarding measured and actual mental ability.
Download or read book Changing Work Changing Workers written by Glynda A. Hull and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This glimpse into factories, hospitals, other work settings, and work-related literacy programs, shows the massive changes in expectations for workers' "skills" in the twenty-first century, especially regarding language and literacy.
Download or read book Testing in American Schools written by United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: And policy options -- Testing in transition -- Educational testing policy: The changing federal role -- Lessons from the past: A history of educational testing in the United States -- How other countries test -- Standardized tests in schools: A primer -- Performance assessment: Methods and characteristics -- Information technologies and testing: Past, present, future -- List of acronyms -- Contractor reports.
Download or read book Policy Perspectives on Educational Testing written by Bernard R. Gifford and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America faces a crisis in education and its accompanying effects on the nation's economic and social life. Educators and policy makers need to document the extent of this crisis, to gauge its potential impact, and to develop educational strategies that would boost achievement; this has turned the spotlight on educational assessment - the procedures, practices, and tools that educators use to measure the progress of students, both as individuals and groups. This book deals with a range of issues within the field of educational assessment, with an emphasis on those issues that have sparked the public policy debate in recent years. Much of this volume concerns itself with the impact of testing on various subgroups of the population - blacks, Hispanics, young children, and children considered to be of `below average' ability. Taken together, the contributions to this volume represent a broad range of views on differential test performance. (This book is part of the subseries of books based on the Ford Foundation's National Commission on Testing and Public Policy. Previous titles in this program include Gifford & Wing/Test in Defense, Gifford & O'Connor/Changing Assessments, Gifford/Test Policy and the Politics of Opportunity Allocation, and Gifford/Test Policy and Test Performance.)
Download or read book Test Policy in Defense written by Bernard R. Gifford and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bernard R. Gifford and Linda C. Wing Standardized testing has become a ubiquitous feature of American life. As a major source of information for reducing uncertainty in the alJocation of merit based educational, training, and employment opportunities, testing affects the life chances of individuals. Moreover, testing inOuences the way in which our societyjudgesitselfandprovides for ourcollective future. Test scores may determine a child's admission to lcindergarten and promotion to the fIrst grade. Most states award the high school diploma only ifa student has passed a minimum competency test. Major institutions of higher education typically require applicants to supplement their records of academic achievement with scores on college admissions tests. In the labor market, as a condition of employment or assignment to training programs, more and more employers are requiring workers to sit for personnel selection tests. Additionally, it has become commonplace to use test scores to calibrate our national sociopolitical condition and our capacity to compete with other countries in the global economy. In short, with increasing frequency and intensity, scores on examinations that purport to be objective and precise measures of individual knowledge, abilities, and potential are playing a critical role in the opportunity marketplace. Similarly, test scores are exercising growing influence in assessments of our social and economic institutions and in policy decisions about the relative invesunents that should be made in each. In all these instantiations, test scores are at the center of high-stakes decision making about the future of individuals and of the nation itself.
Download or read book Test Policy and Test Performance Education Language and Culture written by Bernard R. Gifford and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Construction Versus Choice in Cognitive Measurement written by William C. Ward and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together psychometric, cognitive science, policy, and content domain perspectives on new approaches to educational assessment -- in particular, constructed response, performance testing, and portfolio assessment. These new assessment approaches -- a full range of alternatives to traditional multiple-choice tests -- are useful in all types of large-scale testing programs, including educational admissions, school accountability, and placement. This book's multi-disciplinary perspective identifies the potential advantages and pitfalls of these new assessment forms, as well as the critical research questions that must be addressed if these assessment methods are to benefit education.
Download or read book The Excuse Factory written by Walter K. Olson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1997 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Excuse Factory will spur outrage and spark a national debate about the role of government in the workplace. Olson's expose is certain to shake up the legal industry, rattle government regulators, and cause thousands of workers and managers to nod in vigorous agreement.
Download or read book The Fractured Marketplace for Standardized Testing written by Walter M. Haney and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Standardized testing in the United States has been increasing at a rapid pace in the last twenty-five years. The market for tests has not only been expanding rapidly, but has also been changing sharply in structure into a fractured marketplace. Indeed, one of the main features of this book is that the market for standardized testing is highly fractured - with segments of the market facing monopoly conditions, others facing oligopoly conditions and still others where near free-market conditions exist. One of the main premises of the book is that the structures of markets have strong implications for how those markets perform. While this notion is widely accepted among economists, it is not widely appreciated in educational research. A second motivation for the book is that very little scholarly attention has been focused on the standardized testing industry. This topic - the structure of the testing industry and implications for the quality of tests and test use - affects how we evaluate the learning of students, the effectiveness of teaching, the quality of schools and the educational health of the nation. Of particular concern to the authors is one vital aspect of test quality: test validity. This book is the most current and authoritative review and analysis of the market for standardized testing.
Download or read book Assessing Reading 1 Theory and Practice written by Colin Harrison and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-04 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, along with its companion volume Assessing Reading 2: Changing Practice in Classrooms, was originally conceived as the major outcome from an international seminar on reading assessment held in England. It focuses particularly on theoretical and methodological issues, though with a clear series of links to practices in assessment, especially state and national approaches to classroom-based assessment in the USA, the UK and in Australia, at both primary and secondary levels. Chapters offer new perspectives on the theories that underlie the development and interpretation of reading assessments, national assessments and classroom-based assessment, challenging readers to think in different ways.
Download or read book Education and Sociology written by David Levinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 812 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2002. This single-volume reference provides readers and researchers with access to details on a wide range of topics and issues in the sociology of education. Entries cover both national and international perspectives and studies, as well as tackling controversial points in education today, including gender inequality, globalization, minorities, meritocracy, and more. This is a key, one-of-a-kind resource for all educational researchers and educators.
Download or read book Equity in Multilingual Schools and Communities written by Amanda K. Kibler and published by Channel View Publications. This book was released on 2024-05-14 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book honors the impactful contributions of Guadalupe Valdés toward equity in multilingual schools and communities. As one of the first language education scholars to examine the vibrant language practices of bilingual users in the US Southwest, her work marked a departure from traditional foreign language approaches and sparked a movement focused on valuing heritage languages and creating more equitable educational systems for young people from linguistically minoritized backgrounds. Influenced by the work of Professor Valdés, the contributors to this book draw on multiple aspects of her research to look at new ways of addressing equity and social justice for multilingual users in schools and communities. Chapters focus on three major areas of her work: the nature of languages and literacies in multilingual contexts, language development in classrooms and communities, and equity and access. At the end of each section, short interludes describe contributors’ personal experiences of learning from and with Professor Valdés, providing insight into the practices of mentorship and professional development within the field. This volume will appeal to students and researchers across bilingualism, applied linguistics and education, offering an overview of developments in these fields and directions for future research on equity in multilingual educational settings.
Download or read book How Testing Came to Dominate American Schools written by Gerard Giordano and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2005 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although originally designed as instruments to gauge students' progress, tests eventually were used to modify curricula, learning materials, pedagogy, and many practical features of schooling. Tests were employed to shape attitudes toward national issues such as employment, immigration, and defense. Worried about the enormous consequences that were at stake, advocates and opponents pitched their cases to educators, parents, journalists, and policymakers and also targeted special audiences. Testing proponents pleaded with military leaders, businesspeople, and scholastic publishers while their adversaries appealed to job seekers, college applicants, racial minorities, and anti-establishmentarians. This book illustrates how all of these parties showed interest; many became passionate; and some decisively influenced the course of American educational testing.
Download or read book Constructing Test Items written by Steven J. Osterlind and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
