Placement tests the placement testing process

PLACEMENT TESTS IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS
PLAN:
INTRODUCTION
PLACEMENT TESTING AND REMEDIAL MATHEMATICS FOR POST-SECONDARY STUDENTS: PRESCRIPTION FOR SUCCESS?
PLACEMENT TESTS
THE PLACEMENT TESTING PROCESS
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES


Introduction
It is widely recognized that many students entering post-secondary institutions - community colleges and universities - are deficient in the mathematics background that is presumed necessary for the successful completion of post-secondary level mathematics courses. Various reasons may be proposed to explain this situation:

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  Recent high school graduates enter with math grades that give a false impression of satisfactory backgrounds either because the grades tend to be inflated, or because the actual content coverage differs from the official curriculum.
  
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  High school math courses may not include the particular content needed to prepare students for post-secondary math courses.
  
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  Mature students who have been out of school for a number of years have lost their math skills or may never have acquired them at all. (This applies especially to entering students at community and technical colleges, but to a lesser degree, at universities as well.)
  

Whatever the reasons may be, a common approach to dealing with this problem is to assess all students' math skills at entry with a placement test, and then place underprepared students in a remedial math course (or series of courses) that is intended to bring the students' skills up to the necessary level. The student who successfully completes the remedial program should reasonably expect to succeed in first-year post-secondary level mathematics. By this means, post-secondary institutions hope to extend the opportunities of higher education to a larger number of people and enhance the enrolment and retention rates in mathematics.
Of course this process is not as simple or foolproof as it seems. One of the most important questions that need to be asked is: How effective is the partnership of placement tests and remedial mathematics in improving the success of underprepared students? This article will offer insight into this question by providing a brief overview of widely used placement tests in mathematics and of typical methods of their administration and use. Evidence will be presented from selected longitudinal studies that purport to show that students did benefit from placement testing and remediation. Opposing views and general criticisms of this process will also be considered. The paper concludes with the author's personal view on the use of mathematics placement testing and remedial mathematics.