The Concurrent Validity of Standardized Achievement Tests by Content Area Using Teachers' Ratings as Criteria

Abstract

To assess the concurrent validity of standardized achievement tests using teachers' ratings (and rankings) of pupils' academic achievement as criteria, 42 teachers evaluated each of their students (n = 1,032) in each of five major curricular areas prior to the administration of a battery of standardized achievement tests. The teachers were directed to rate each student's proficiency disregarding attendance, attitude, deportment, and so on. Within-class correlation coefficients were computed to eliminate rater leniency bias. The standardized achievement tests were found to have substantial concurrent validity in reading, math, language arts, science, and social studies. The normalized teacher ranks yielded significantly higher validity coefficients than did the ratings, although the magnitude of the difference was small. The concurrent validity coefficients for language arts, reading, and math were significantly higher than those in science and social studies.

Primary School Teachers' Judgements of Reading Achievement

“…For example, teacher measures compared with standardised test results for reading have generally been positively and signi cantly correlated, ranging from 0.41 to 0.73 (Airasian et al, 1977;Luce & Hoge, 1978;Hopkins et al, 1985;Wright & Wiese, 1988). Sharpley & Edgar (1986) separated reading into two components, vocabulary and comprehension, nding correlations between teachers and student measures of 0.42-0.44 and 0.50-0.56 for vocabulary and comprehension, respectively.…”

“…Sharpley & Edgar (1986) separated reading into two components, vocabulary and comprehension, nding correlations between teachers and student measures of 0.42-0.44 and 0.50-0.56 for vocabulary and comprehension, respectively. Such correlations have been interpreted as indicating the validity of teachers' judgements (Hoge & Coladarci, 1989;Hopkins et al, 1985;Wright & Wiese, 1988), although many have accounted for only small shared variance between teacher and test measures. However, Hoge & Coladarci (1989) suggested that this may be a consequence of indirect estimates of achievement by teachers in the form of ratings and rankings; asking teachers to estimate directly student performance scores for a particular test does appear to improve correlations to a range of 0.68-0.82 (Doherty & Conolly, 1985;Wright & Wiese, 1988;Freeman, 1993).…”

The Effects of Peers' Beliefs on 8th-Grade Students' Identification With School

“…The KR-20 index of reliability for the total test exceeds .80, indicating good internal consistency (Mill er, 1992). Hopkins and Williams (1985) found the test to have significantly high concurrent validity by content area.…”

Personality similarity between teachers and their students influences teacher judgement of student achievement

“…For indirect judgements, teachers do not know about the characteristics and tasks of the underlying achievement test and they have to rate students' overall achievement in a certain domain on a rating scale (e.g. Hopkins, George, & Williams, 1985). We will refer to that type of judgement as global judgements.…”