Educational Psychology / Unit 12 EDP 1152 review, 2 to 3 minutes
Validity Depends on Use
The idea
The most important idea in assessment is that validity belongs to the interpretations and uses of scores, not to the test itself, which is why one test can support one decision and not another. A classroom unit test with strong content evidence supports conclusions about what students learned from that unit; it says little about ability to predict later success. An admission test with strong predictive evidence supports selection; it says little about which skills a particular student has mastered. Norm-referenced scores rank students; criterion-referenced scores describe what they can do. A status model and a growth model can reach opposite conclusions about the same school. Reliability is necessary but never sufficient, and every score carries measurement error, so a single score should be read as a band. Construct-irrelevant factors, such as English proficiency or anxiety, and contested effects, such as stereotype threat, are further reasons to ask what a score can and cannot mean.
In practice
Worked example: a district wants to use one reading test for three purposes. To place students in reading groups, it checks that the scores match observed reading performance, which is concurrent evidence. To judge teachers, it would need a growth model and far more evidence than one test provides. To decide which skills to teach next, it needs criterion-referenced information, which a percentile rank alone does not give. The same test may be valid for the first purpose and not for the other two.
Where people slip
The question "is this test valid?" has no answer on its own. Ask "valid for what use, and for which students?" Face appeal is not evidence, high stakes magnify every weakness, and a single score is never the whole picture of a student.
Your place on the trail
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