The first standard test that we know of were administered in China over 2000 years ago during the Han dynasty

Chinese officials used them to determine aptitude for various government posts.

The subject matter includes philosophy farming and even military tactics. Standardized test continue to be used around the world for the next two millennia.

And today they’re used for everything from evaluating stair climbs for fire fighters in France Do you language examination for??diplomas in Canada to students in schools.

Some standardize tests measure scores only in relation to the results of other test takers others measure performance and how well test taker meet predetermined criteria so the stair climbs for firefighters could be measured by comparing the time of the climb to that of all firefighters.

This might be expressed in what many called a bell curve or it could be evaluate with reference to set criteria such as caring a certain amount of weight a certain distance, up a certain number of stairs.

Similarly the diplomat might be measured against other test taking diplomats, or against a set of fixed criteria which demonstrate different levels of language proficiency.

And all of this results can be expressed using some called a percentile .

If a diplomat is in the 70 percentile 70 percentage of test takers scored below her.

If she scored in the 30th percentile 70% of test takes score above her.

Although standardized tests are sometimes controversial, they are simply a tool as a thought experiment ,think of a standardized test as a ruler .

A rulers usefulness depends on two things, first the job we asked to do ,our a ruler can’t measure the temperature outside, or how loud someone is singing, The rulers usefulness depends on its design, say you need to measure the circumference of an orange , our ruler measures length which is the right quantity, but it hasn’t been design it was the flexibility required for the task at hand , So if standardized tests are given the wrong job,or aren’t design properly ,they may end up measuring the wrong things.

In the case of schools, students with test anxiety may have problems performing their best on a standardize test not because they don’t know the answer, because you’re being too nervous to show what they learned

students with reading challenges May struggle with the wording of a math problem

, so their test result will better reflect their literacy rather than numeracy skills, and students are confused by examples on tests that contain unfamiliar culture reference May do poorly telling us more about the test takers culture familiarity Dansere academic learning in this case is the tests may need to be designed differently.

Standardize tests can also have a hard time measuring abstract characteristics such as creativity ,critical thinking and collaboration .

if we design a test poorly or ask it to do the wrong job, or a job it’s not very good at, The result may not be reliable and valid ,reliability and validity are two critical ideas for understanding standardized tests.

To understand the difference between them, we can use the metaphor of two broken thermometers, an unreliable thermometer give you a different reading each time you take your temperature, and the reliable but invalid thermometer is consistently 10° too hot.

validity also depends on an accurate interpretation of results, if people say the results of a test mean something they don’t, that test may have a validity problem,

Just as we wouldn’t expect a ruler to tell us how much an elephant weighs, or what it had for breakfast, we can’t expect a standardized test along to reliable tell us how smart someone is, how diplomats will handle a tough situation, oh how brave a fire fighter will turn out to be.

So standardized tests may help us to learn a little about a lot of people in a short time but they usually can’t tell us a lot about a single person.

Many social scientists worry about test scores resulting in sweeping and often negative changes for test takers , sometimes with long-term life consequences, we can’t blame the test though it’s up to us to use the right test for the right jobs, and to interpret results appropriately.

<The end of average>

Book??by Harvard professor Todd Rose?