Mr. WEISS. I think we will go to the questioning of the two people who just testified since they are the test-taker part of our witnesses this morning. After that we will go to Dr. Priddy and perhaps Dr. Hoffman will be hereby at that time as well.

Carolyn, I think I perhaps did you an injustice in not asking you how long it took you to get here.

Ms. BENNETT. Twenty minutes.

Mr. WEISS. I wonder if each of you could give us some idea, not just of your own personal experience, but of your involvement with other students' attitudes toward the tests, as to their impression of whether, in fact, there is sufficient information given about them, whether, in fact, they have sufficient opportunity to study for them, whatever.

You are both obviously outstanding students and you may not have some of the same problems others might.

Carolyn?

Ms. BENNETT. Thank you. My feeling is that my peers and the students that I have spoken to, both about the SAT and MCAT, is generally positive. I emphasize that for the MCAT as well. It is better if I discuss the MCAT in particular.

Mr. WEISS. When did you take it?

Ms. BENNETT. In the spring of 1980. It is critical to the pre-med population at Hopkins to do well on the exam and everybody was coaching and practicing and they want to see as many of the items as they can. It is competitive and takes 61⁄2 hours, but generally it is a positive feeling. The feelings of the people that I took the exam with was that when they came out of it it was a fair representation of the work that they had one in college and it was going to be a good index as to how they were going to perform in medical school. Mr. WEISS. Did most of the people who took that test study for it? Did they attend coaching or preparation school?

Ms. BENNETT. About a fifth of the medical class took a coaching

course.

Mr. WEISS. That was the new MCAT?

Ms. BENNETT. That is right.

Mr. WEISS. In 1979, I believe, the medical college testing group decided that they really needed a new test. They were unhappy with the old test, I guess from the point of view of reliability, and they decided that they would try a new series of types of questions, a new area of limitation as to where they would ask the questions from.

Even the testmakers themselves do not contend that they have always given tests which they have been fully satisfied with.

MS. BENNETT. I believe that the students that were taking it when I was taking it believe that the material on the exam was appropriate for the purpose.

Mr. WEISS. My understanding is that MCAT is limited to the second year college equivalent biology course level.

MS. BENNETT. Yes.

Mr. WEISS. Everybody knew going into that test what the general area would be that would be covered?

MS. BENNETT. Level of difficulty?

Mr. WEISS. Well, the subject area that would be covered.
MS. BENNETT. Yes.

Mr. WEISS. That is sort of different from the SAT, though.

Ms. BENNETT. True.

Mr. WEISS. Did you have a clear idea going into the SAT what areas would be covered?

Ms. BENNETT. Yes; I did, but because of a different reason, from the PSAT.

Mr. WEISS. Michael, what was your experience?

Mr. GALLIGAN. Going in to take the SAT exam, I had very little idea as to what specifically the format would be. I had not taken the PSAT so I had no idea in that respect, nor did I receive information from my school as to what the format was.

However, I was fortunate enough to have a fine educational background, so that I was able to handle what was presented to me OK. A particular experience which I would like to tell of is when I went to visit the Jackie Robinson Foundation Youth Convention in Columbia University a couple of months ago.

The students there also did not have the information, the appropriate information, as to what the test would actually test, as to what the format would be and what the necessary levels of math and verbal skills had to be attained so that one could actually do the exercises of the test and display his knowledge in that manner to make the test valid.

Nor did they have the necessary skills in many cases, OK, so I feel that the responsibility really cannot lie with the school. If you are going to say that there has to be complete equality for this test which is designed to measure aptitude so you have to have complete equality as much as you can, then each student has to be personally given the information and it is necessary that all the information is gotten to each student so that he is fully aware of what the tests will be, because in many cases the students did not know what they had to attain educationally nor were they taught it at their schools.

I can't speak for myself in that manner. I have to speak for them because that is where the fault is. I was fortunate enough to go to a very fine school but there are a lot of other people in this world who aren't.

Mr. WEISS. How do you feel about the policy which ETS and that which the College Entrance Examination Board people have now adopted, of disclosing upon request the answer sheets together with the questions, in I think five out of the seven major administrations of the test?

How do you feel, Carolyn?

MS. BENNETT. I support it.

Mr. WEISS. Expand on it if you will. Why do you think that that is a good idea?

Ms. BENNETT. I think it is important to give students an opportunity to see a copy of their exam but I also think, from what little I know about testing, that it is important to keep some of the exam

secure.

Five out of seven is a good decision for ETS to have made in that case. If I was taking the SAT and I wanted a copy of my exam, I would take it at one of the disclosed administrations, and not at one of the secure ones.

Do you see what I mean?

Mr. WEISS. Yes. Why do you think it is worthwhile for students to be able to get their answers back?

Ms. BENNETT. Well, in all honesty, I don't know if I would request a copy of my SAT. On the MCAT, that I would but not on the SAT.

Mr. WEISS. Why would you request it in the MCAT?

MS. BENNETT. Level of difficulty of the exam, particularly on the quantitative_analysis questions where the answer takes quite a while, and I would be able to check levels of difficulty, but I wouldn't feel the need to on the SAT.

Mr. WEISS. That has to do with some extent with your sense of confidence about the subject matter in the two tests, is that right? Ms. BENNETT. That is right.

Mr. WEISS. Michael, how do you feel about the disclosure policy? Mr. GALLIGAN. I support it for two reasons: First, as I said, there is an educational benefit in seeing a test which you took and what you got wrong; OK. For just the sake of knowledge, knowing what you got wrong and learning that.

Second, for seeing how you test, which is a very important skill. The second reason is that no one has a corner on truth. Truth is something which everybody has to contribute to, young and old, regardless of age or religion or anything else. Everybody should be able to see what they did so that they are convinced that either it was wrong or right and graded accordingly.

My experience with the SAT testifies to that. I was dissatisfied with the particular question from a personal standpoint, and I think it is very important that a person is able to satisfy that lingering feeling about a particular question.

It is very important to make the truth consistent with the person. He has to understand what is right and what is wrong. A very good way to do that is just to allow people to see the tests. Mr. WEISS. Carolyn, did you make application to get your MCAT results and were you able to get them?

Ms. BENNETT. No; they are not available.

Mr. WEISS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Bailey?

Mr. BAILEY. I don't have any questions.

Mr. SIMON. Let me add my commendation to both witnesses.

I think it is a great thing to have student witnesses, meaning no disrespect to other witnesses, but we too often hear from professionals in the field and not often enough from people like the two of you. Thank you.

Mr. WEISS. Again, my appreciation and that of the subcommittees to both of you for taking time out of your leisure or worktime to be with us today. Thank you so much.

We will proceed with the rest of the panelists, so if Patrick Shields, Dr. Schafer, Dr. Kasteen, Mr. Sjogren and Dr. Robinson will join Dr. Priddy at the witness table, we will have one large panel and Dr. Priddy will be the lead witness.

You will have to move the microphones back and forth in front of you.

Dr. Priddy, why don't you proceed.

Do you have a prepared statement that you submitted to us?
Mr. PRIDDY. No, sir.

Mr. WEISS. I should tell all of the witnesses that if you do have prepared statements we will enter those statements in their entirety in the record without objection.

You may read it, extrapolate or excerpt from it, handle it whatever way you like.

If you wish to add additional material to the testimony you give here the record will remain open for a 10-day period and if you submit it to the committee during that time. We will include other additional material in the record as well.

Dr. Priddy?

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL D. PRIDDY, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, PLANNING, AND EVALUATION, GUILFORD COUNTY SCHOOL SYSTEM, GREENSBORO, N.C., ACCOMPANIED BY MARIAN EPSTEIN, EXPERT IN TEST DEVELOPMENT

Mr. PRIDDY. Thank you, Mr. Weiss. I would like to thank the other members of the subcommittees for the opportunity to speak before you.

I am Michael Priddy, and I live in Greensboro, N.C.

I work in a school system in that area. It is in the Piedmont section of North Carolina, industrial service area with a strong agricultural base and a county of about 315,000 people.

I work for the Guilford County School System, 25,000 students, sixth largest in North Carolina, and made up of 44 schools.

Before I proceed with some detail about my work and some experiences, I would also like to make the Chair aware that I am accompanied by Dr. Marian Epstein, nationally recognized expert in test development, and she can respond to specific questions by types of tests administered by ETS.

My work involves planning for instructional and administrative purposes, research, that is the conduct or the oversight of it, evaluation of curricular programs as well as administrative programs and the standardized testing program.

That program is made up of a State-mandated program that involves grades 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 11, and is completed by a local component that fills in at some of the other grade levels.

If I may, I will limit my remarks to that area specifically, testing, and as it is related to program evaluation.

The plain thrust of the office and its staff is to serve as an adviser to the superintendent on the board of education, and if you will, functions as a gyroscope for the school system in a sense of attempting to keep us on track and insuring that our resources and efforts are pointed toward things that will improve the curriculum and instruction for the students.

For that reason, we draw on multiple sources but one is standardized test results, and I will share some of those experiences with you, particularly the effect of those results on curriculum instruction.

For years we have been accused of letting others dictate what we do, test developers, book publishers, and it is very easy to fall into that trap because they are expert at what they do and public school people can easily rely on them, but that does not have to be

the case and it is not the case in many school systems and one is

ours.

We take those results each year and very systematically go through them on a system basis and on a school-by-school basis in an effort to determine where the strengths are and where the weaknesses are.

If I might use one example that many people are currently familiar with, minimum competency testing, which has become a pervasive force in America in the last 4 or 5 years, and I think because of public reaction, that is, a perception that we were not producing people who were minimally literate in reading and math.

That wasn't the case in Guilford County when tests were first administered. We did have a small percentage of students who were identified as needing additional help, but the point is, even with the better students, we could see trends in those test results that indicated that the curriculum and the instructional program in the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth grades needed some mending, needed to be defined, refined, and revised.

Why do you see this kind of trend, this trailing off later in the grades and we were looking at the text and curricular guides and finding various resons for it? We were and we are making decisions on the basis of standardized test results, feedback, program evaluations, feedback from committees, and so on.

Then there is the other group that are affected besides teachers, and that is the students, and, of course, that is what we are all about.

We found that using multiple indicators as a way to determine where those students stand is a far more appropriate method for insuring that we are addressing their needs, the individual's needs, as opposed to random processes that vary from year to year.

I would like to stop with that for a moment and move to an earlier part of my career when I was teaching. I chose to teach in an area of North Carolina for 4 years, rural, deprived, made up predominantly of minority populations.

When I first arrived at the school system, I learned many things about it, and most of them were biases and prejudices of the people that were there. One prejudice I formed very early is that students were being encouraged not to strive but to do what others before them had done, and that had been based on experience of guidance counselors and principals and particularly with admission to postsecondary institutions.

Students were being encouraged to accept a lower quality of postsecondary instruction than they could handle and that was often associated with standardized test scores, and things like that. Those schools will not consider you, things like that.

We attempted to alter that view, some colleagues and myself, and began pointing out to students that the test scores are only one of many indicators used by colleges and universities to make decisions, and particularly in North Carolina I can think of two or three schools at that point in history were making sincere efforts to look at grades, community involvement, school involvement, so on, and used in the standardized test scores as an indication of present ability, and the others as independent indicators of poten