Some Issues in the Standardized Testing of Minority Students

Abstract

The standardized testing of minority students has stimulated some of the most crucial and antagonistic debates in education today. In this crossfire, it is often difficult for the participants to seriously consider arguments emanating from the opposing side. The consequence is that there is little evolution in the capacity of the educational system to adapt to the needs of minority students that are grounded in cultural differences. In one sense, standardized tests reflect this inertia, and in another, they contribute to the problem. Critics of the testing movement assert that current tests purporting to measure intelligence, aptitude, or achievement are biased against certain ethnic/racial groups. Proponents generally protest that misuse of such tests is the real culprit. The major focus of this paper is to examine some potential sources of bias in aptitude and achievement testing of minority and, in particular, black students. In recent years psychometricians have struggled to delineate the nature of bias, to determine when a test score may or may not contain bias, and to develop procedures for detecting, minimizing, or eliminating bias in the test itself. However, many critics of standardized testing claim that bias is inherent in the socio-economic structure of our society and that test characteristics or use must be examined in this context. In this paper the premise is advanced that bias in standardized tests cannot be properly explained or understood without reference to the socio-economic matrix from which it evolved.