274 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OP SCIENCE 



STANDARDIZED TESTS 

 W. C. Hawthorne, Crane Junior College, Chicago 



Tests or examinations of some sort are a recognized 

 part of the instruction in every serious course of study. 

 If it is a standard course, — one in which the same topics, 

 essentially, are given to large numbers of classes, the 

 tests in the different classes will necessarily be somewhat 

 alike. If a test covers materials commonly given in 

 all schools, and if we know, not merely guess, what the 

 average student should do on such a test, — better still, 

 if we know what the best ten percent will do, the next 

 best ten percent, and so on, we shall have a Standardized 

 Test. 



The preparation of a Standardized Test involves much 

 more work than is given commonly to a set of ordinary 

 examination questions. The subject matter of the test 

 should cover not only what has just been studied but what 

 we may reasonably except will be studied next year and 

 every year in all schools. This will make a long examina- 

 tion, you may say. It is true, but not a long one for the 

 pupil to answer, or for the teacher to score, as I shall 

 show. Moreover, the Standardized Test parts company 

 with the idea that any pupil shall answer all the ques- 

 tions. If the test is to be used in many different schools, 

 in order to give every one a chance, it should contain 

 from twenty-five to fifty questions, correct answers for 

 sixty percent of which may, perhaps, be regarded as a 

 high score. 



Such a test as this is scored easily if the answers are 

 very short. There are several types of questions admitt- 

 ing of such answers, and they need not be of the "yes or 

 no" type either. First may be placed numerical pro- 

 blems, and the pupil should have been trained to indi- 

 cate the process by which the answer was obtained ; not 

 the literal formula, but one containing all the numerical 

 data, with the operations indicated. Perhaps the pupil is 

 called upon to indicate, by underscoring, which of several 

 answers given is the correct one. Perhaps certain state- 

 ments are given, to be checked as true, false or uncer- 

 tain. I think the "true-false" test, and especially the 



