TESTS OF

ACHIEVEMENT

JESTIN G JOSE
Achievement tests are tools used in psychology and education to assess the
knowledge or skills gained in a specific area. They are essential for evaluating
progress, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and refining teaching methods.
Key Uses of Achievement Tests

1. Identifying Instructional Gaps

Achievement tests highlight areas where the syllabus may need improvement.
Helps in assessing the adequacy of course content, determining what should be retained,
removed, or added.
2. Guiding Personalized Instruction
Performance on these tests reveals individual learning needs.
Helps teachers modify instruction to provide additional support where necessary.
Example: If a student struggles with spelling, tailored spelling support can be introduced.
3. Setting Educational Goals
Achievement tests play a key role in setting and evaluating educational objectives.
They allow a critical review of both course content and teaching methods, supporting
continuous improvement.
General Achievement Batteries: Nature and Scope
General achievement batteries are standardized assessments designed to measure academic skills across subjects
commonly covered in school curricula, such as reading, arithmetic, and language usage. These batteries are widely used
from elementary grades through high school and, in some cases, college. They allow for a comprehensive evaluation of
educational skills and knowledge, often across multiple subjects.

Nature of General Achievement Batteries

1. Standardized Across Grade Levels:
General achievement batteries cover a broad grade range, from early elementary through high school, and some
extend into adult education.
These batteries often consist of multiple overlapping tests, with specific forms for different grade levels,
allowing consistent assessment across grade progression.
2. Uniform Normative Comparison:
Scores can be compared within a specific grade (horizontal comparison) or across grades (vertical comparison),
making it possible to track academic growth or compare performance across subjects.
3. Skill and Knowledge Focus:
Some batteries primarily assess educational skills such as critical thinking, reading comprehension, and math
problem-solving (e.g., the California Achievement Tests).
Others combine skill-based assessments with content knowledge (specific facts or concepts), enabling a more
detailed view of students’ grasp of subject-specific information.
Scope and Applications of General Achievement Batteries
1. Detailed Skill Profiles:
These batteries provide separate subtest scores for each academic area, allowing a breakdown of
strengths and weaknesses in specific skills (e.g., vocabulary, arithmetic, language usage).
2. Tracking Progress Over Time:
By using a single score scale, achievement batteries support the measurement of student growth over
time, making them valuable for longitudinal tracking of academic development.
3. Adaptability for Specialized Areas:
At the high school level, where students take specialized courses, these batteries can assess
comprehension in particular content areas (e.g., interpreting texts in literature, social studies, or
sciences).
Some batteries also include work-study skills, such as map reading, interpreting graphs, and using
reference materials, making them relevant for real-world applications.
Examples of General Achievement Batteries
Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) and Iowa Tests of Educational Development (ITED):
These tests assess a broad range of academic skills from the elementary level to high school.
The ITED, used in later grades, focuses on the ability to interpret reading materials across disciplines, such
as literature, social studies, and natural sciences.
SRA Achievement Series:
This series evaluates core educational skills like reading, arithmetic, spelling, and language usage, as well as
practical skills like interpreting graphs and maps.
Sequential Tests of Educational Progress (STEP) - Series II:
STEP emphasizes not only factual knowledge but also the application of skills to solve new problems,
assessing how well students can apply what they’ve learned in novel contexts.
California Achievement Tests (CAT):
Primarily skill-focused, these tests evaluate basic academic abilities across various subjects, providing
insight into core competencies without relying heavily on content-specific knowledge.
Stanford Achievement Test and Stanford Test of Academic Skills:
This series spans Grades 1 through 12, offering a coordinated assessment approach across elementary
and high school levels.
Specialized Standardized Tests
As students advance through the educational system, the need for standardized tests in specialized
subjects becomes increasingly important. Unlike general achievement tests, these assessments
focus on subject-specific knowledge and skills, allowing educators to gauge proficiency in a wide
range of disciplines.

Purpose and Scope

Need for Subject-Specific Assessment:
While general batteries assess basic educational skills, specialized tests evaluate specific subject
areas like American history, physics, foreign languages, etc.
These tests provide targeted assessments that help instructors evaluate students in courses beyond
the core subjects, especially at higher education levels.
Availability Across Subjects:
Tests cover nearly every subject, from the arts to physical education, with particularly common
tests in reading and mathematics.
Modern foreign language tests often incorporate tape recordings to assess skills in reading,
writing, listening, and speaking—key areas for language proficiency.
Advantages of Specialized Achievement Tests
Lower Correlations with Intelligence Tests:
These tests assess distinct, course-related knowledge rather than broad educational skills, leading
to lower correlations with intelligence tests and contributing unique data on student performance.
Better Outcome Prediction:
When combined with intelligence assessments, specialized tests add unique insights, improving
predictions for academic and career success.
Teacher-Made Classroom Tests
Classroom tests designed by teachers play an essential role in measuring students' understanding of course material in
ways standardized tests cannot always achieve. Here’s a summary of the main points to include for an informative
presentation.
Why Teacher-Made Tests Are Essential
1. Course-Specific Relevance:
Due to the diversity of content across courses, especially at higher levels, standardized tests are often inadequate.
Teacher-made tests allow instructors to tailor questions specifically to their unique course objectives and
content.
2. Benefits of Customization:
Localized tests help meet specific goals, reflect classroom discussions, and assess skills not typically measured by
standardized tests.
Steps in Developing Classroom Tests
1. Test Planning:
Instructors should begin with a clear test plan to ensure balanced coverage of topics and avoid overemphasizing
certain areas.
Identify both course objectives (what knowledge and skills students should retain) and desired behavioral
outcomes (problem-solving, critical thinking).
Item Writing:
Effective test items must be carefully written to avoid a focus on mere fact recall, which is easily
forgotten. Emphasis should be on items that test critical thinking, evaluation, and application of
knowledge, as these are more likely to be retained.
Item Analysis:
Techniques like item analysis help identify poorly performing questions, allowing teachers to refine
items for clarity and fairness.
A diagnostic test is an assessment tool designed to evaluate an individual's skills, knowledge, or abilities in a
specific area to identify strengths and weaknesses. In the context of education, diagnostic tests are particularly
focused on determining specific learning difficulties or areas where a student may require additional support.

Purpose: The main goal of diagnostic tests is to provide insight into a learner's current level of understanding
and to diagnose any issues that may be hindering their academic performance. They can identify specific
learning disabilities, comprehension problems, or gaps in knowledge.

Types of Assessments: Diagnostic tests can vary significantly in their format and thoroughness. They can
include:

Group Tests: Administered to a large number of students simultaneously, yielding general scores (e.g., overall
reading comprehension).

Individual Tests: Conducted one-on-one to provide a more detailed analysis of a student’s abilities and
difficulties (e.g., specific reading or arithmetic skills).

Components: Many diagnostic tests include various subtests focusing on different skills, such as reading
comprehension, vocabulary, sound discrimination, or math problem-solving.
A criterion-referenced test (CRT) is a type of assessment that measures a student's performance
against a specific set of criteria or standards, rather than comparing their performance to that of
other students (which is the case in norm-referenced tests).
 The Stanford Achievement Test (SAT) is a standardized achievement battery designed to assess academic
skills across a range of subjects for students from grades 1 to 9. First introduced in 1923, the SAT has
undergone several revisions to maintain relevance and technical quality, with the most recent edition being
in 1973. Here’s a summary to highlight its features:
Purpose and Scope
Grades Covered: The SAT is designed for students in grades 1–9 and comes in six different batteries for various grade
levels.
Testing Time: Each full battery takes about 4–5 hours, distributed over multiple sessions. Shorter “basic” versions are
available, focusing on core areas.
Multiple-Choice Format: All questions use a multiple-choice format to allow for standardized scoring and comparisons.

Key Subtests at Intermediate Level II (Grades 5–6)

1. Vocabulary: Measures vocabulary knowledge through incomplete sentences.
2. Reading Comprehension: Involves reading prose and poetry, followed by questions on central ideas, inferences, and
implicit meanings.
3. Word Study Skills: Focuses on identifying sounds of letters and creating words from syllables.
4. Mathematics Concepts: Tests understanding of terms, notation, and operations, covering areas like fractions,
percentages, and geometry.
5. Mathematics Computation: Involves direct calculation tasks.
Mathematics Applications: Includes real-world arithmetic reasoning problems.
Spelling: Tests spelling and recognition of homophones in context.
Language: Covers grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.
Social Science: Tests knowledge in history, geography, economics, and other social sciences.
Science: Covers basic physical and biological science concepts.
Listening Comprehension: Assesses comprehension through oral reading followed by questions.

Features and Interpretation

Norms and Scores: The SAT provides percentile ranks and stanines (nine-point scales) within grades, along with scaled
scores that align with the Stanford Early School Achievement Test (SESAT) and the Stanford Test of Academic Skills
(TASK), offering a continuous measurement system.
Instructional Objectives: Each test item is linked to specific instructional objectives, allowing educators to identify and
address areas where students may need improvement.
Standardization: Based on a national sample of over 275,000 students, stratified by demographics according to the 1970
U.S. Census.
Reliability: High reliability across subtests and total scores, though reliability decreases for specific skill or objective
groups, making them more applicable to class averages than individual assessment.
Adult Basic Learning Examination (ABLE)
The Adult Basic Learning Examination (ABLE) is a widely used achievement test tailored for adults in educational
programs and job training, as well as inmates in penal institutions. This exam assesses literacy and arithmetic skills crucial
for daily life.

1. Levels and Forms:

Levels: Three levels to assess skill equivalence for Grades 1-4, 5-8, and 9-12.
Forms: Two equivalent forms for each level allow for flexible administration.
2. Key Subtests:
Vocabulary: Measures vocabulary knowledge through word-choice tasks based on oral definitions.
Reading: Assesses paragraph comprehension, inference skills, and general knowledge.
Spelling: Requires writing dictated words, testing basic spelling accuracy.
Arithmetic: Covers computational and problem-solving skills, with Level I designed to be reading-free.
3. Scoring and Norms:
Scores can be interpreted as grade equivalents using established norms from elementary and high school samples.
Percentile and stanine norms are provided for adult education program participants and military samples.
High reliability (split-half and Kuder-Richardson coefficients between .80 and .96) ensures consistent results.
Correlations between ABLE and GED scores range from the .60s to .80s, validating its use for high school
equivalency assessment.
Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-Second Edition (WIAT-II)

•The Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-Second Edition (WIAT-II) is a comprehensive achievement test for
clients of age 4 to 85 years. Like the Wechsler intelligence tests, the WIAT-II is administered face-to-face and one-
on-one.

•The WIAT-II measures achievement in four broad areas: reading, math, written language, and oral language.
Each of these broad areas is assessed by two or three subtests.

•The Reading Composite derives from scores on three subtests: Word Reading (reading isolated words),
Pseudoword Decoding (using phonetic skills to sound out nonsense words, such as “plore” or “tharch”), and
Reading Comprehension (reading sentences or passages and answering questions about their content).

•The Mathematics Composite derives from two subtests: Numerical Operations (written math problems) and
Math Reasoning (word problems, numerical pattern, statistics and probability questions, etc.).

•The Written Language Composite derives from two subtests: Spelling (increasingly difficult words) and Written
Expression (constructing sentences, paragraphs, or essays as instructed).
•The Oral Language Composite derives from two subtests: Listening Comprehension (paying attention to orally
presented information and answering questions about it) and Oral Expression (using speech to repeat spoken
material, create stories about presented pictures, provide directions, etc.).
•
•The WIAT-II yields standard scores on the same scale as most intelligence tests: a mean of 100 and a standard
deviation of 15. It also yields age and grade equivalencies for each subtest. The test was standardized on more
than 5,500 people who were chosen to match recent U.S. Census data in terms of sex, age, race/ethnicity,
geographic region, and parent education level.
•
•About 1,100 of the individuals in the standardization sample also took the age-appropriate Wechsler intelligence
scale, so the WIAT-II is “linked” to the Wechsler IQ tests, which enhances the validity of comparisons between
these two types of tests. Overall, the reliability and validity data supporting the WIAT-II is quite strong.
Limitations of Achievement Tests

1. Scores on achievement tests cannot be taken as a basis for deciding students' promotion to the
next grade. This is because most of the achievement tests are not foolproof measures of achievement
in the concemed field. Many factors may determine the classroom achievement of a pupil but those
factors may not be adequately assessed by the achievement test.

2. Achievement tests, as compared to intelligence tests and aptitude tests, are dificil to construct.

3. Sometimes achievement test results are taken as a measure of the teacher's effectiveness But this is
not a corect interpretation of the results because the factors that affect a pupily achievement are
numerous of which, the teacher's quality is only one.
THANK YOU