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They are, however, convenient and the economy of scale becomes very appealing, so we often give in to that value rather than take the time to question other underlying considerations, such as making a careful examination of the match between the test content and the local curriculum or how are we going to accommodate differences determined by the local community or by the State as it relates to what you will teach and what those various tests will

measure.

Certainly, I know that school administrators and educators, teachers themselves all across this country spend a lot of time in trying to make careful selections of those instruments so that they are indeed applying the most appropriate one for their needs and for their students, but the degree, that same amount of time, that same amount of money might be better invested in a kind of assessment procedure which is developed locally, which teachers have greater control over in terms of applying when they have the need to apply, which can be applied whenever they choose, and can provide the kind of information they need on an ongoing basis to truly assist student need and help to measure student progress.

This does indeed suggest that we are going to recognize perhaps the validity and a national measurement scheme that we have not thoroughly examined. The national assessment project notwithstanding, we know that a number of accommodations are made so we are not reporting inaccurately to the public.

This I am not sure how we will implement.

Mr. ERLENBORN. Mr. Chairman, might I say I accept the gentle chiding of the chairman as to the premises of my questions, and I think I owe you an explanation.

I guess I just failed to articulate part of my thought process.

After 25 years as a legislator, I have learned something about what happens to legislation. I have observed it over the course of the years.

It is my opinion, once a legislative body establishes the principle that it has the right to regulate an industry it seldom is reversed, nor does it stand in place. It grows and grows and grows, and Í guess I just didn't articulate that too well.

Mr. WEISS. Well, I am glad that you clarified your position, Mr. Erlenborn.

I have one final question.

Dr. Sjogren, in the course of your statement, I am not sure if I caught the full impact of what you meant when you said that companies, I assume testing companies, should be punished if they misuse the test in some way.

Clarify what you meant by that.

Mr. SJOGREN. I am sorry for that ambiguity. What was intended there was to state that testing companies who do not act responsibly such as, I believe, ETS is now acting, the American College Test, the College Board, those are three of the groups with which I am most acquainted, I feel they are acting very responsibly and should be licensed to continue on in doing the good things that we are doing.

However, there are testing companies that fail to act responsibly and fail to meet most of the conditions specified in your proposal,

and those companies should be made to, should be punished. That was my intent.

Mr. WEISS. Well, you know and I have been sometimes taken to task for appearing to be too critical about ETS.

The American College Testing group has in fact to this moment to the best of my knowledge refused disclosure of any kind. I am not sure you would not include them as one of those who should be subject to some punishment.

Mr. SJOGREN. The item of disclosure was exempted from my point.

I still have very mixed feelings about disclosure but I am talking about the other kinds of information that is provided to the consumer prior to the testing.

Mr. WEISS. Before we conclude our session this morning, if there are any of you who have some additional comment or comments that you care to make just to total out your presentation, so that we don't have you hanging, feel free at this point to do so.

Mr. CASTEEN. This question of the Federal interest in testing and especially college admissions testing is one that has interested me for a couple of years.

I didn't answer Congressman Erlenborn's question earlier because I am really not sure where I would come down on that one on the end concerning some of the things Ms. Robinson said on behalf of NEA.

On page 2 of the resolutions appended to the NEA presentation, it is said that the NEA opposes the use of tests that deny students full access to equal educational opportunities. The extent to which that happens needs to be examined. That is the kind of matter we intend to look into seriously, but that is one point.

Second, as to evaluation of teachers, that is a State function. You asked about State interest in this type of topic, and then the examples of tests that should not be administered, and also Ms. Robinson's expansion on this matter of locally based assessment together I think concern me more than I realized.

The first example given is tests that are potentially damaging to a student's self-concept. Because we must administer 9,000 or 10,000 rejection letters to college, we deal with those people regularly because they have been told no, and it is worth exploring the possibility of the student who does not read well enough, who reads poorly, he ought to know that at a rather early age than local assessment guarantees deliver that information.

The trend toward grade inflation is essentially a locally based form of self-perpetuation of reward. That national measure that might provide a notion as to whether students do read well enough, that that may have some societal value that needs to be weighed. Students who have not benefited adequately from schools, those who come from ethnic groups, those students deserve early notification, early information of a kind that I fear is not available through most of the local assessment programs that I know about, so I am concerned that the Federal interest in this question may well have to do with protecting the quality of experience of the children who go through schools or in some other way protecting the teachers or the other interest groups.

I am not sure that the Federal interest is defined in this particular set of objections to certain kinds of testing that Ms. Robinson has presented. In the end, the attention focused by your interest in this topic on the whole question of testing has been healthy for education, but I am apprehensive that our best as a nation is served by legislation that may serve to diminish the amount of nationally referenced measurement information that is available to us as we try to assess our progress in schools.

Mr. WEISS. Your statement leads me to ask this question.

Are you at all bothered by the confusion that may well be created in the minds of students as well as their parents by the use of the term "aptitude" when in fact it is achievement that is meant by that word in Scholastic Aptitude Tests; does that bother you at all?

Mr. CASTEEN. That may be a loaded question. I recall that in 1979 I suggested to your committee that what we are looking at is a certain set of skills that can be used to learn, reading, and so on, and a certain set of bodies of knowledge that can be demonstrated on certain kinds of tests.

Personally, I do not find the word "aptitude" especially useful. It is as ephemeral for me as is the word "intelligence." I know what skills are, certain bodies of knowledge are, and I am concerned about the convertibility of those phenomena to educational progress or achievement.

I suspect that the word itself means what one wants it to mean, aptitude, and that we may in the future want to take a good look at that, but I doubt that there is a Federal interest in that word.

Mr. WEISS. Well, the only reason I asked the question is because you confronted the issue raised about people's self-worth, and we have had testimony in the course of these hearings over the last couple of years about how people having taken those tests which they are led to believe because they are told that no amount of coaching or preparation will help them, that, in fact, it is some vague, inherent aptitude for academic pursuits that is at stake and when they don't do well, it is not that they have not been taught well, that they have not studied hard enough, it is that they themselves are not good enough inherently.

That is the problem and, again, you are right. I don't think that I want to mandate by law that you can't use the word "aptitude" but I would think that the educational establishment, both test makers as well as test givers, would want to think real hard as to whether they are not doing themselves as well as the test takers a grave injustice by allowing others to misinterpret what is meant by that word.

Mr. CASTEEN. Good point, I think.

Mr. WEISS. If there is anyone else that wants to comment on anything at all, now is the time.

If not, I very much appreciate your participation this morning. These hearings will undoubtedly continue and hopefully sometime in the near future, not the day after tomorrow, we will have some further legislative progress to report and I look forward to the reports about the study which you spoke about.

Thank you all very, very much.

The subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:35 p.m., the joint hearing of the Subcommittee on Elementary, Secondary, and Vocational Education and the Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education of the Committee on Education and Labor adjourned.]

[Additional materials submitted for the record follow:]

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I am writing to you today to request the inclusion of additional material
into the official record of the hearings held on July 21 and 22 on H.R.
1662, the Educational Testing Act of 1981. As you know, I was present
as a technical adviser at the hearing on Wednesday, July 22, accompanying
Dr. Michael Priddy of the Guilford County, North Carolina school system,
a witness on the "Experiences of Test-Takers" panel. Inasmuch as the
hearing record is being held open for ten days following the hearings,
I would like to take this opportunity to supplement the record with the
following:

(1) A correction to the testimony of Michael Galligan, a witness on the "Experiences of Test-Takers" panel on Wednesday, July 22. Mr. Galligan, a student who found a flaw in a question on the SAT, indicated in his testimony that because of his finding the error, the grades of almost 20,000 students who had chosen the alternative answer were raised ten to twenty points. He further stated:

"Unfortunately, students outside of New York, where
the "truth in testing" law is not in effect, have
not had their scores adjusted. Are not the students
in those other states just as correct as the students
in New York?"

This statement is grossly misleading because the particular question challenged by Mr. Galligan was not included on test forms used in any other states, and therefore no other students' scores should or could have been changed.

(2) A response to statements made by Michael Galligan during the Question-and-Answer period following his testimony. Rep. Weiss asked

91-170 0-82--20

The Honorable

Paul Simon, Chairman

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August 6, 1981

both the student witnesses to comment upon their experience as to
students' attitudes about tests, their impressions of whether suffi-
cient information is provided about them, whether students have an
opportunity to study for them, etc. Mr. Galligan indicated that prior
to taking the SAT, he "had very little idea as to what specifically the
format could be..." He explained that he had not taken the PSAT so
that, "I had no idea in that respect, nor did I receive information from
my school as to what the format was.

"

Mr. Galligan then reported that students who attended the Jackie Robinson Foundation Youth Convention at Columbia University a few months ago 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 (sic)."

We at ETS were astonished at hearing the above statements by Mr. Galligan because of our extensive distribution to high schools and to individual student requestors of material describing in detail the nature of the SAT, the skills and abilities measured, the format of the various question types, suggestions as to how to approach answering the questions, as well as hints for using time efficiently and for guessing. This information is included in the booklet entitled, Taking the SAT (Attachment A) almost three million of which are sent each year to high school counselors across the country for free distribution to students along with test registration materials. Included in the booklet is a complete sample test, with a sample answer sheet and the list of correct answers, as well as an explanation of how to score the test. The memorandum to Directors of Guidance or Counseling (included with Attachment A) recently sent with these materials includes the instruction: "Another change in the ATP for 1981-82 is that Taking the SAT contains a new sample test. Please be sure that all students who register for the SAT receive a copy of this publication as far in advance of the test date as possible so that they have ample time to become familiar with the test."

Unlike Mr. Galligan, the majority of students who take the SAT have elected to take the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) in October of their junior year. This test is a slightly abbreviated version of the SAT and acquaints the student with the test questions and format and provides a true-to-life practice testing situation. High school counselors provide to interested students the PSAT/NMSQT Student Bulletin, which includes a full-length test with answers and scoring directions. PSAT testtakers now automatically receive through their high schools a copy of the test questions, the correct answers, and their own answers at the time their scores are reported. They can then use this information in preparation for taking the SAT.

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