Word: standards
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...spite of nagging questions about the reliability of ETS's three-figure quantifications of people's "aptitude," over-worked, understaffed admissions boards and personnel managers continue to rely upon test scores for an easy, quick, "objective" standard. In some parts of the country, state law now sets specific SAT and LSAT cut-off scores for admission to state universities. In the 1971 Federal court case of Baker et al. v. Columbus (Miss.) Municipal Separate School District et al., the court established that the Columbus school authorities' use of the National Teacher Exam (an ETS test) cut-off score...
...lesser scale, cheating and coaching call into question the validity of test scores as a reliable standard of measurement of "aptitude." For $150, the College Skills Center in New York offers a thirty hour course in vocabulary and reading comprehension and claims to improve students' scores by an average of 50 to 100 points. And rumor has it that for something upwards of $200 you can rent a Harvard Law student to take your law boards for you. ETS itself acknowledges about 2,000 cases of cheating each year--that it knows about...
...course it is possible that the size of the American educational system and the need for a standard measure of comparison necessitate some form of standardized testing (though whether it should be centralized, and so all-pervasive, is another question). But where the tendency to overemphasize and abuse test scores is so strong, the issues of test reliability, bias, validity and misinterpretation are critical. ETS, being accountable only to its board of trustees (who elect their own successors), has rarely been eager to get involved in making sure that the scores from its tests are used properly. Although proposals...
...still primitive state of the art of psychometrics, statistically measuring psychological characteristics, is no excuse for overreliance upon a defective standard of measurement. As Hoffman concludes in The Tyranny of Testing...
...client organizations" like the College Board--devoted offspring of the mother organization--are no more likely or able to force changes on ETS than college admissions offices. Everyone seems to have accepted the ETS line--"Well, it may not be perfect, but there has to be some objective standard. Got any better ideas?" And, in the most helpless position of all, is the consumer, whose future will probably be decided by this product that he never even wanted to buy in the first place. A rotten deal. Maybe that $200 to rent a law student isn't so high after...