A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions, conditions for administering, scoring procedures, and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner.
Any test in which the same test is given in the same manner to all test takers is a standardized test. Standardized tests need not be high-stakes tests, time-limited tests, or multiple-choice tests. The opposite of a standardized test is a non-standardized test. Non-standardized testing gives significantly different tests to different test takers, or gives the same test under significantly different conditions (e.g., one group is permitted far less time to complete the test than the next group), or evaluates them differently (e.g., the same answer is counted right for one student, but wrong for another student).
Standardized tests are perceived as being more fair than non-standardized tests. The consistency also permits more reliable comparison of outcomes across all test takers.
Read more about Standardized Test: Design and Scoring, Standards, Advantages, Disadvantages and Criticism, Scoring Information Loss, Educational Decisions
Famous quotes containing the words standardized and/or test:
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.”
—George Jean Nathan (1882–1958)