Comparing Results From Disparate Assessments

(continued on page 2) different tests. In the early days of Title I, the predecessor of Chapter 1, for example, there was an interest in being able to accumulate and compare results for districts and states that used different standardized tests. That interest spawned the massive “Anchor Test Study” in the early 1970s, that had as one of its two major purposes the development of ways to “translate a child’s score on any one of seven widely used standardized reading tests into a score on any of the other tests” (Bianchini & Loret, 1974). One of the major goals in the development of the Title I Evaluation and Reporting System also was to make it possible to compare results obtained using disparate tests. Title I and Chapter 1 are hardly the only examples. The desire to compare Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores with those of the American College Testing (ACT) Program Assessment has led to the development of numerous “concordance tables.” A number of colleges use such tables to convert composite scores on the ACT to the scale of the SAT or SAT total scores to the scale of the ACT. Yet another example is the use of tests that have been “customized” to align with state or district curriculum objectives, while maintaining a link to a published norm-referenced test so that local results can be compared to national norms. Although these examples show that the desire to link different tests is not new, some of the advocated changes in the nature and uses of educational assessments during the past few years have greatly expanded this interest. State legislation enacted in Kentucky, for example, requires comparisons of state assessment results to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Participants in the New Standards Project anticipate that state assessment results will be interpretable in terms of common national standards. The January 1992 report of the National Council on Education Standards and Testing (NCEST) here are many situations where it would be useful to be able to compare results obtained using