Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 16, 1993 TAG: 9311160194
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Previously, the more than 400,000 students applying to graduate schools sat in large groups to take the Graduate Record Examination, which is offered five times a year. But now students can instead sit at computers and take the tests in small groups almost any day.
Other major exams, including the Scholastic Assessment Test taken by college-bound high school students, are expected to follow suit.
At $93 the computerized version is almost twice the $48 fee for the paper test, but the results are available the instant the exam is done.
Most significantly, according to Educational Testing Service, the New Jersey-based company that designs and administers the exam, the new test will provide a more accurate measure of a student's ability. When a question is answered correctly, a tougher one appears on the screen. An incorrect answer brings up an easier question. The goal is to quickly zero in on a student's highest ability level and direct most of the questions there in the hopes of measuring it more precisely.
"It is hard to imagine that in the next decade most testing will not be done this way," said Nancy S. Cole, president-elect of Educational Testing Service. "It's not just that the test is glitzy, chic and computerized, it's that the assessment is going to represent them better."
The best students will finish the computer test much more quickly than the 3 1/2-hour paper test, because they won't have to bother with easy questions. Right answers to difficult questions earn higher scores. The same grading scale of 200 to 800 points will be used.
Two weeks ago, teachers discarded their No. 2 pencils and began taking their licensing exams on computer. In April, the nursing licensing exam hits the computer age, too. Because 1.8 million high school students take the SAT each year, logistical problems of accommodating so many students in small groups for that test still must be worked out.
The pencil-and-paper version of the GRE will be phased out by 1997.
"I don't know if there is any other event in ETS history that will have such an impact on students," said Cole.
But some critics of the standardized tests are not so sure this change is a good one. "Computerizing a bad test doesn't make it a good test, and it may make it worse," said Bob Schaeffer, public education director for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, a national group that has been critical of standardized tests.
Many educators have criticized the current standardized tests as biased against women and minority students. Schaeffer said the new test adds another factor - a person's familiarity with computers - that biases it against some students. "Computer anxiety is much more common among women than men, and black females have the greatest anxiety of all," he said.
Schaeffer said low-income students who do not have access to computers at home or school also would be at a disadvantage.
ETS said that was its chief concern during the four years it was developing the "computerized adaptive test." That is why, Cole said, ETS made sure only minimal computer skills are required - mainly, a student needs to work a "mouse," a hand-held control for the cursor. Every student is seated in front of a terminal and walked through the instructions on how to use it before the test.
Field tests did show "some evidence that female test-takers showed greater anxiety in the beginning . . . but their final performance seemed unaffected," ETS said.
Starting this week, the GRE will be offered three days a week in 150 Sylvan Test Centers-for-profit facilities that offer enrichment or remedial classes for students. Many are located in shopping malls.
By spring, there will be 220 Sylvan centers and 25 colleges, along with six ETS regional offices, offering the computer GRE test. The plan is to increase the number of testing facilities and offer the exams "nearly every day of the year, except maybe Christmas and Thanksgiving," said Louis C. Woodruff, associate director of computer-based testing at ETS.
Now, students tell ETS what institutions should receive their scores before they take the test. Then they wait six weeks for a letter to be mailed with the results. In computer testing, student see their score, and then decide which schools, if any, will get the results.
For now, the computer test essentially asks the same types of questions that are on the paper test, but changes are planned. A computer test is being developed that will score long written answers, scan mathematical graphs and ask students to do more analytic thinking. That kind of testing is costly now because human judges are needed.
by CNB