A fair test? : assessment, achievement, and equity

324 Pages·1994·10.103 MB·English

by  Caroline V. Gipps, Patricia Murphy

ASSESSING
ASSESSMENT
Assessment, achievement and equity
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CAROLINE GIPPS
Winner of the 1995 Standing Conference
for Studies in Education Award

ASSESSING
ASSESSMENT
A FAIR TEST?
ASSESSING
ASSESSMENT
Series Editor:
Harry Torrance, University of Sussex
The aim of this series is to take a longer term view of
current developments in assessment and to interrogate
them in terms of research evidence deriving from both
theoretical and empirical work. The intention is to provide
a basis for testing the rhetoric of current policy and for the
development of well-founded practice.
Current titles
Patricia M. Broadfoot: Education, Assessment and
Society: A Sociological Analysis
Sue Butterfield: Educational Objectives and National
Assessment
Caroline Gipps et ala Intuition or Evidence? Teachers
and National Assessment of Seven-year-olds
Caroline Gipps and Patricia Murphy: A Fair Test?
Assessment, Achievement and Equity
John Gray and Brian Wilcox: ‘Good School, Bad School’:
Evaluating Performance and Encouraging
Improvement
Christopher Pole: Assessing and Recording Achievement
Malcolm Ross et al.: Assessing Achievement in the Arts
Harry Torrance (ed.): Evaluating Authentic Assessment
Alison Wolf: Competence-based Assessment
ASSESSING
ASSESSMENT
A FAIR TEST?
,
ASSESSMENT ACHIEVEMENT
AND EQUITY
Caroline Gipps and
Patricia Murphy
Program In Education
CURRICULUM LAB
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First published 1994
Reprinted 1996
LIBRARY
Copyright © Caroline Gipps andd Patr lcia Murphy 1994 —
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the
purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
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licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited. Details of such
licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained from the
Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd of 90 Tottenham Court Road,
London, W1P 9HE.
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 335 15673 8 (pbk) 0 335 15674 6 (hbk)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gipps, C.V.
A fair test? : assessment, achievement and equity / Caroline Gipps
and Patricia Murphy.
p. cm. — (Assessing assessment)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-335-15674-6. - ISBN 0-335-15673-8 (pbk.)
1. Test bias—Great Britain. 2. Examinations —Great Britain—
Validity. 3. Sexism in educational tests—Great Britain.
4. Educational tests and measurements—Great Britain. I. Murphy,
Patricia, 1952- . II. Title. III. Series.
LB3060.62.G57 1994
371.2'6'013 —dc20 93-23368
CIP
Typeset by Colset Pte Ltd, Singapore
Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd,
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
CONTENTS
Series editor’s introduction vii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
1 Defining equity 7
2 Sex differences in intellectual abilities 28
3 Intelligence and intelligence testing 65
4 International surveys of achievement 92
5 National assessment programmes 1: The Assessment
of Performance Unit in the UK 114
6 National assessment programmes 2: The National
Assessment of Educational Progress in the USA 152
7 National Curriculum assessment 186
8 Examination performance 210
9 Conclusions: Beyond the concept of a fair test 260
References 278
Index 303
'
SERIES EDITOR’S
INTRODUCTION
Changing theories and methods of assessment have been the focus
of significant attention for some years now, not only in the United
Kingdom, but also in many other western industrial countries
and many developing countries. Curriculum developers have real¬
ized that real change will not take place in schools if traditional
paper-and-pencil tests, be they essay or multiple choice, remain
unchanged to exert a constraining influence on how teachers and
pupils approach new curricula. Similarly, examiners have been
concerned to develop more valid and ‘authentic’ (to use the Ameri¬
can parlance) ways of assessing the changes which have been intro¬
duced into school syllabuses over recent years - more practical
work, oral work, problem solving and so forth. In turn psycho¬
logists and sociologists have become concerned with the impact
of assessment on learning and motivation, and how that impact
can be developed more positively. This has led to a myriad of
developments in the field of assessment, often involving an increas¬
ing role for the teacher in school-based assessment, as more rele¬
vant and challenging tasks are devised by examination agencies
for administration by teachers in schools, and as the role and
status of more routine teacher assessment of coursework, practical
viii A fair test?
work, groupwork and so forth has become enhanced.
However, educationists have not been the only ones to focus
much more closely on the inter-relation of curriculum, pedagogy
and assessment. Governments around the world, but particularly
in the United Kingdom, have also begun to take a close interest
in the ways in which assessment can influence and even control
teaching, and in the changes in curriculum and teaching which
could be brought about by changes in assessment. This interest
has not been wholly coherent. Government intervention in the UK
has sometimes initiated, sometimes reinforced the move towards
a more practical and vocationally oriented curriculum and thus
the move towards more practical, school-based assessment. But
government has also been concerned with issues of accountability
and with what it sees as the maintenance of traditional academic
standards through the use of externally set tests.
It is precisely because of this complexity and confusion that
the present series of books on assessment has been developed.
Many claims are being made with respect to the efficacy of new
approaches to assessment which require careful review and inves¬
tigation. Likewise many changes are being required by government
intervention which may lead to hurried and poorly understood
developments being implemented in schools. The aim of this series
is to take a longer term view of the changes which are occurring,
to move beyond the immediate problems of implementation and
to interrogate the claims and the changes in terms of broader
research evidence which derives from both theoretical and empi¬
rical work. In reviewing the field in this way the intention of the
series is thus to highlight relevant research evidence, identify key
factors and principles which should underpin the developments
taking place, and provide teachers and administrators with a basis
for informed decision-making which takes the educational issues
seriously and goes beyond simply accommodating the latest policy
imperative.
With these intentions in mind, Caroline Gipps and Patricia
Murphy’s book is a particularly timely and important one. While
much debate about external testing versus school-based assessment
is ostensibly concerned with the fairness and objectivity of assess¬
ment, and while much policy rhetoric encompasses a commitment
to ‘equal opportunities’, what is actually meant by these terms, and
what is accomplished in practice, is seldom subject to rigorous