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...Instruction The word test strikes terror into the heart of students of any age. The more comprehensive the test, the stronger the fear of failure. In recent years, assessment methods have changed dramatically from expecting students to recite by rote to evaluation of a working knowledge of the subject in question. Tests are a fact of life for every student, and because they are such a common occurrence, it is very easy to overlook the purposes behind testing as an assessment of academic achievement. I. Types of Tests. Tests are divided into two major groups, norm-referenced tests and criterion-referenced tests (Bond, 1996). Norm-based testing is generally used to measure performance among groups of students from varying schools, for example, the Scholastic Aptitude Test or SAT. While they may be useful in measuring educational achievement in a particular area or region, they have been criticized because for the most part, they focus on low-level, basic skills (Bond, 1996). Criterion-level testing is much more of a personal measurement. It measures how much the individual student knows of basic concepts as well as how that...