Abstract

What the Test Scores Really Mean
Schrag, Peter | October 4, 1986 issue

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The article focuses on the significance of test scores in judging academic performance. According to the conventional wisdom, the academic standards of the country's public schools suffered a long and more or less uninterrupted decline between the 1960s and the early 1980s. The most important piece of evidence that has been offered for the existence of a decline is the drop in test scores, particularly in the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), which is taken by most of the country's college-bound high-school seniors. While declining SAT scores among college-bound high-school seniors were drawing increased public attention in the 1970s, the improving scores for students in the lower grades during the same period were largely ignored.

See Also:

EXAMINATIONS -- Scoring; EDUCATIONAL tests & measurements; ACADEMIC achievement; PUBLIC schools; SAT (Educational test); STUDENTS
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