Standardized assessment: contributions and challenges

Abstract

Standardized assessments have a long history, which started at the beginning of the 20th century. This field of Psychology and Education has greatly impacted the educational world and, lately, has served to design public policies and as a form of accountability. The main characteristic of standardized tests is that they can be administered to many people, whose responses are automatically qualified with electronic devices. Their great disadvantage is that they use, mainly, the answer’s selection format, that makes the testing somewhat artificial. Despite this limitation, standardized tests are used for a variety of purposes: from admission to educational institutions to the evaluation of a country’s educational quality. Throughout its history, standardized evaluations have been object of criticisms, some fair and others not. Given its importance, the purpose of this text is to specify what is meant by standardized assessments, to describe its origin and evolution in the educational field, to explain its main uses, and to point out the limitations and challenges that such evaluations will have in the future.

>> Read more