Placing Children in Special Education A Strategy for Equity (1982) / Chapter Skim
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Testing in Educational Placement: Issues and Evidence
Testing in Educational Placement: Issues and Evidence
Pages 230-261
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From page 230... ...
Therefore, this paper focuses less on psychometric issues than on their interplay with the legal, political, and moral issues raised by testing in the context of educational placement. The paper, in providing background and support for portions of the panel's report, attempts to accomplish two distinct but related tasks.
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From page 231... ...
Finally, this paper does not deal directly with the consequences of classification the effects of labeling or the educational benefits and costs of placement in EMR classes-although one of its major themes is that the consequences, not just the accuracy, of classification must be taken into account in deciding whether any assessment procedure is appropriate. This paper focuses primarily on the widely used, individually administered tests that yield IQ scores, notably the Stanford-Binet and the revised Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-R)
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From page 232... ...
TESTING ON TRIAL: BRIEFS FOR THE DEFENSE AND FOR THE PROSECUTION Proponents of the use of tests of general ability in educational placement hold that such tests measure global, enduring qualities of cognitive functioning not necessarily "native intelligence" but some broad ability to learn, reason, and grasp abstract concepts. Proponents deny that tests are culturally biased; while they recognize that children from certain ethnic and socioeconomic groups on the average score lower than white, middleclass children, they attribute these group differences in test scores to genuine differences in cognitive functioning, caused by heredity, environment, or both.
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From page 233... ...
Some critics also argue that the test situation itself is unfamiliar and threatening to low-income and/or minority children, further depressing their scores. Thus, argue the critics, tests are inherently biased against low-income and/or minority children and systematically underestimate their intellectual ability relative to that of middle-class whites.
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From page 234... ...
The fourth is central to the mission of the panel and crosscuts the others; it is discussed in each substantive section and in the conclusion of this paper. The possible contribution of testing to the disproportionate representation of boys in EMR classes another concern of the panel is not discussed explicitly since the controversy over testing has focused on ethnicity rather than gender.
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From page 235... ...
He himself was convinced that IQ tests measure something that is not fixed or innate "certain skills" and he does not seem to equate these skills with intelligence. Presumably, however, the "experts" who "devise and distribute" intelligence tests must believe that they measure something that can legitimately be called "intelligence," even if it is ill defined and not fixed or innate.
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From page 236... ...
The generality of mental test scores has been the subject of a long debate in psychometrics. Early leaders in the field, notably Spearman and Thurstone, took opposed positions.
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From page 237... ...
For elementary school children, validity coefficients (correlations) of .7 or higher have often been obtained using achievement tests as criteria (see Crano et al., 19721.
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From page 238... ...
They are obviously consistent with the hypothesis that IQ tests measure academic ability, which is later manifested in scholastic performance, and they have been interpreted in this way, implicitly or explicitly, by many of those who use tests in schools. They are also consistent with the hypothesis that IQ tests, teacher-made tests, and standardized achievement tests all sample the same domain of acquired skills.
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From page 239... ...
In practice, as indicated earlier, this improvement may or may not be achieved, depending on whether additional indicators are in fact collected and used.) A second limitation somewhat paradoxical, given the first is that the predictive information available in the IQ overlaps with that available in the child's grade record or achievement test scores, when the latter are available.
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From page 240... ...
To justify separate placement on the basis of an IQ score it would be necessary to show that children with low IQs require and profit from a different curriculum or different type of instruction from that available in regular classes. (Alternatively, separate placement might be justified if it could be shown that children with low IQs are not harmed by it, while children in regular classes are harmed when children with low IQs share those regular classes.)
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From page 241... ...
ARE TESTS BIASED? Do tests misrepresent the skills or abilities of minority children and those from low-income families?
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From page 242... ...
in their post-trial memorandum supported the plaintiffs in PAST: Plantiffs argue that racial and cultural bias, demonstrated most graphically by the differences in the test scores by race, reflect differences in cultural patterns and levels of exposure to the dominant school culture between blacks and whites. Judge Peckham, in supporting his conclusion that tests are biased, cited testimony by witnesses for both plaintiffs and defendants to the effect that racial differences in IQ scores are culturally caused.
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From page 243... ...
Given this technical definition of bias, it is not inconsistent to argue that the use of a particular test for a particular purpose may be unfair even if the test is, in the sense defined, unbiased. For example, it is consistent to argue that IQ tests are racially unbiased measures of academic ability but that ability is affected by cultural experience and that it is, therefore, unfair to use IQ tests to make decisions that require inferences about innate potential.
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From page 244... ...
BIAS IN THE TEST SITUATION Many aspects of the test situation, aside from a child's actual skill or ability, are known or hypothesized to influence test scores. Any of these factors could in theory operate differentially by race, thereby artificially depressing the scores of black children relative to those of white children.
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From page 245... ...
One answer is that the people who retest children and boost their IQ scores drastically are merely making the test easier, e.g., by translating items containing difficult words into items with the same content but with easier words, by giving hints, by putting the most favorable interpretation on ambiguous answers, etc. Such changes in procedure may or may not be desirable, but the question of interest here is whether this approach to testing boosts the scores of minority children selectively.
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From page 246... ...
More important is the fact that judgments about item content (even if there is agreement) are neither necessary nor sufficient to prove that particular items discriminate against black children, in the sense of lowering their test scores.
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From page 247... ...
A straightforward extension of that logic makes differential predictive validity a measure of bias, in a precise but rather narrow sense: If a test is a valid measure of some trait or skill for some social groups but not others, and if an independent criterion measure of the same trait or skill exists, it follows that the test should predict the criterion for those groups for which it is valid and fail to predict the criterion for those groups for which it is invalid. For example, if IQ tests measure intellectual skills or abilities more accurately for white children than for black children, IQ should correlate more highly with measures of future school 4There exist flagrant examples of racially offensive content in widely used tests.
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From page 248... ...
The second question has to do with whether the margin of error in predicting individual performance on the criterion is equal for both groups or greater for one group than the other. These issues have been explored fairly extensively in a series of studies on the differential predictive validity of various ability tests applicable to young adults, such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the Law School Admission Test, and numerous tests of job aptitude.
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From page 249... ...
~ As indicated in the earlier section on predictive validity, correlations between IQ scores and scores on standardized achievement tests are generally quite high. Typically they are only slightly lower for minority children than for whites (see Sattler, 1974, for some representative findings)
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From page 250... ...
In sum, within the measurement specialist's precise but narrow empirical framework for assessing bias, there are only a few studies indicating a relatively modest amount of distortion in test scores of minority children, Gordon (1980) reports partial results of a regression study, in which he found overprediction for Mexican-American students.
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From page 251... ...
It is unlikely that elimination of psychometric bias, in the absence of other changes in policy and practice, would have much effect on the IQ scores of minority children or the proportion assigned to EMR classes. It is important to recognize the limited import of this conclusion.
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From page 252... ...
revived the hereditarian viewpoint within the field and provoked a debate that still continues. Jensen's paper attempted to show that IQ tests measure general intellectual ability, that this ability is of great social importance, and that educational intervention has relatively little effect on individual differences in IQ.
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From page 253... ...
This conjecture was not based on direct examination of data on the causes of racial differences but rather was an extension of Jensen's main discussion, which, as already noted, dealt with individual differences within ethnic groups. Jensen's critics have stressed that average group differences in a particular trait can be due mostly or entirely to the environment even if the heritability of the trait within groups is very high.
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From page 254... ...
7 intended for children who are congenitally unable to learn in regular classes; to be valid for purposes of placing children in such classes, the judge reasoned, tests 7California's EMR classes were intended for "pupils whose mental capabilities make it impossible for them to profit from the regular instructional programs" (Larry P
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From page 255... ...
Organic causes can be identified in a small proportion of cases of mild mental retardation. However, there is no evidence that different educational procedures are needed, or work better, for organically disabled children, compared with other children with similar functional abilities but no (known)
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From page 256... ...
As long as there are separate classes or programs for children who are significantly lacking in traditional academic skills, both environmentalists and hereditarians would expect minority children to be overrepresented in such classes, at least for the immediate future. Critics of IQ testing and EMR classes (e.g., the plaintiffs in Larry P
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From page 257... ...
A second lesson is that standardized ability tests, as currently conceived and constructed, will inevitably contribute to disproportionate placement of minority children in classes for mildly mentally retarded students (or classes by any other name that are designed to serve children whose prognosis for success in school is poor)
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From page 258... ...
are well equipped to consider other kinds of issues; given the ambiguous meanings of test scores, and given the consequences of placement, is it consistent with established legal standards of fairness to use tests as placement devices? Are some uses fair, while others are not?
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From page 259... ...
K 1976 The WISC may not be a valid predictor of school performance for primary-grade minority children.
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From page 260... ...
R., and Rice, W 1979 Evaluation of the predictive validity of tests of mental ability for classroom performance in elementary grades.
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From page 261... ...
A 1976 IQ test performance of black children adopted by white families.
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