Are standards meant to be enforced?

Since 1954, APA, along with two sister associations, has published standards for testing use and development. And for almost as long, there's been a debate about whether the standards should be formally enforced, either by the publishers or by some external agency.

For the associations themselves--APA, the American Educational Research Association and the National Council on Measurement in Education--enforcement seems a political quagmire outside their scope of operation. But those who favor some sort of regulatory system argue that it's useless to have rules without an enforcement mechanism.

"What good are standards if they aren't enforced?" asks educational testing expert George Madaus, PhD, of Boston College. "And if they aren't standards, why not call them guidelines? Because they're more than that and everyone knows it."

Because testing is on the rise in the United States--for everything from job placement to mental health evaluations--some form of enforcement is inevitable, say people who follow testing policy. That enforcement could come from an independent board formed by the communities that develop, use and are affected by tests, from private industry, or the federal government, says Susana Urbina, PhD, chair of APA's Committee on Psychological Tests and Assessment.

"The proliferation of tests and the technical nature of test development and evaluation are such that test users and consumers need all the guidance they can get from the experts and standard makers," she says.

No one wants to see a "policing" of the testing community, she admits. But an independent board could review testing instruments and indicate whether they meet the test development standards at a minimum level. Such a board wouldn't attempt to assess how people use the tests it rates, says Urbina, and therefore couldn't prevent testing misuse.

"This is just one idea," says Urbina. "But let's debate it in the profession. Let's have a full airing in the hope that we take the initiative rather than the government."

Federal enforcement of the testing standards would not be welcome by most test developers, agrees Wayne Camara, PhD, director of the Office of Research and Development at the College Board. He suggests that the three associations set up a mediation panel to review claims of inappropriate test use. The panel would examine each case and issue a public statement.

And, much the way the Supreme Court operates, the panel could select cases that have implications for other cases.

Madaus recently set up just such a panel to evaluate educational test use. The National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy, based at Boston College and funded by the Ford Foundation, is an independent panel that evaluates how well educational tests adhere to the testing standards and how they affect students, teachers and school administrators.

"My hope," says Madaus, "is that a national board of this sort can be a middle ground between litigation in the courts--always a bad way to interpret professional standards--and federal enforcement."

--B. Azar



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