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Placement Testing is about the placement tests that colleges and universities use to assess college readiness and place students into their initial classes. Since most two-year colleges have open, non-competitive admissions policies, many students are admitted even though they do not have college-level academic qualifications. Tests primarily assess abilities in English, math and reading and in other disciplines such as foreign languages, science, computer Internet and health. The goal is to offer low-scoring students remedial coursework so that they can undertake regular coursework.〔Conley, David. “Replacing Remediation with Readiness” (working paper). Prepared for the NCPR Developmental Education Conference: What Policies and Practices Work for Students? September 23–24, 2010, Teachers College, Columbia University, p. 12.〕 The most common tests given are College Board’s ACCUPLACER and ACT’s COMPASS, both of which are online, computer-adaptive, multiple-choice tests. Some colleges add computer-scored essay writing tests, including ACCUPLACER’s WritePlacer, and COMPASS’s e-Write. Less-prepared students are placed into various remedial situations, from Adult Basic Education, through various levels of developmental college courses. Historically, placement tests also served additional purposes such as providing individual instructors a prediction of each student’s likely academic success, sorting students into homogeneous skill groups within the same course level and introducing students to course material. Placement testing can also serve a gatekeeper function, keeping academically challenged students from progressing into college programs, particularly in competitive admissions programs such as nursing within otherwise open-entry colleges. ==Test Validity== In the construction of a test, subject matter experts (SMEs) construct questions that assess skills typically required of students for that content area. "Cut scores" are the minimum scores used to divide students into higher and lower level courses. SMEs sort test items into categories of appropriate difficulty, or correlate item difficulty to course levels. "Performance Level Descriptors" define the required skills for remedial and standard courses.〔Morgan, Deanna. “Best Practices for Setting Placement Cut Scores in Postsecondary Education” (working paper). Prepared for the NCPR Developmental Education Conference: What Policies and Practices Work for Students? September 23–24, 2010, Teachers College, Columbia University, p. 12.〕 Once in use, placement tests are assessed for the degree to which they predict the achievements of students once they have been assigned to remedial or standard classes. Since grades serve as a common indirect measure of student learning, in the customary analysis, a binary logistic regression is run using the test score as the independent variable, and course grades as the dependent conditions. Typically, grades of A, B or C are counted as successful, while grades of D and F are counted as unsuccessful. Grades of I (for an unconverted Incomplete) and W (a Withdrawal) may be considered unsuccessful or may be excluded from the analysis. In practice, there is usually a clear positive relationship between student placement test scores and initial course grades. However, placement tests usually predict less than 10% of college course success variance. Test items typically do not match the tasks students face in the classroom (they lack "face" validity). Instead, the tests offer multiple choice questions and extemporaneous essays. Test scores are interpreted based on a proposed use and assessed in that context, rather than simply by establishing a predictive relationship between scores and grades. Since placement tests are designed to predict student learning in college courses, by extension they predict the need for developmental education. However, the efficacy of developmental education has been questioned in recent research studies, such as those by Bettinger and Long;〔Bettinger, E., and Long, B. T. “Remediation at the Community College: Student Participation and Outcomes.” In C. A. Kozeracki (ed.), ‘‘Responding to the Challenges of Developmental Education.’’ New Directions for Community Colleges, no. 129. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.〕 Calcagno and Long;〔Calcagno, J. C., and Long, B. T. “The Impact of Postsecondary Remediation Using a Regression Discontinuity Approach: Addressing Endogenous Sorting and Noncompliance.” New York: National Center for Postsecondary Research, 2008.〕 Martorell and McFarlin〔Martorell, P., and McFarlin, I. “Help or Hindrance? The Effects of College Remediation on Academic and Labor Market Outcomes.” Dallas: University of Texas at Dallas, 2007.〕 and Attewell, Lavin, Domina and Levey.〔Attewell, P., Lavin, D., Domina, T., and Levey, T. “New Evidence on College Remediation.” ‘‘Journal of Higher Education’’ 2006, 77(5), pp 886–924.〕 If placement tests are designed to measure a student’s ability to learn at a given college level, a correlation between test and course success may not be sufficient to establish the test as a valid measure, for example, if the students systematically cheat on both test and course. Such critiques are less about testing than about the validity of the educational enterprise itself. One study found that one-quarter of students assigned to math remediation and one-third of students assigned to English remediation in the US would have passed regular university courses with a grade of at least a B without any additional support. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Placement testing」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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