Children and Reading Tests (Advances in Discourse Processes Series, Vol. LXV)

Children and Reading Tests (Advances in Discourse Processes Series, Vol. LXV), by Clifford Hill and Eric Larsen. Stamford, CT: JAI Press, Inc., 2000. 425 pp. $73.25, cloth. $39.50, paper. The Advances in Discourse Processes Series is one of the most well-regarded research series in both linguistics and education. This most recent volume has maintained the high standards of the series by presenting a thorough and detailed analysis of how the minds of young children function while taking typical multiple-choice reading tests. The authors are Clifford Hill, who is Gates Professor of Language and Education as well as Director of the Program in African Languages at Columbia University, and Eric Larsen, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Educational Administration at Teachers College, Columbia University and former senior editor of an elementary language arts series. Hill and Larsen have worked and published together on the topic of reading tests since 1983. Studies of how children’s minds work while taking tests are difficult to do for a variety of reasons. Determining the thought processes of anyone presents the difficult challenge of drawing inferences from self-reports and linguistic analyses of tasks. Determining mental functioning of children is further complicated by limitations in how much a young child can articulate about language and thought processes. There are further political complications when real test items are used since test-makers have some history of refusing to publish detailed accounts of actual items-especially when results throw doubt on the validity of the items. In the late 1970’s, Hill gained access to test material that had been pilot tested for the second edition of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests, but was subsequently not used in the published tests. Hill argues that the items are typical and were rejected for matters of maintaining balance in the various categories of the final test rather than because the items were especially problematic or unusual. (Test-makers traditionally begin with double to quadruple the items they will actually use once items have been winnowed for ability to discriminate student performance as well as to represent different types of reading material.) In the 25 years since receiving access to the test items, Hill, Larsen, and generations of Columbia graduate students have used these items to gather a treasure house of detailed interview information from hundreds of 8-10 year-old students. These students have been tested with these items and interviewed, in-depth, on their thought processes for varying sub-samples of the items. Some of the data was gathered as part of National Institute of Education funded grants; some as part of doctoral dissertation research and others as part of Hill’s class projects. The objective of the present volume is “to gather together and integrate all that work that has accumulated around the original corpus of test material” (p. 12). The integrated data allow for comparisons of performance by European American, African American, and in some cases Hispanic and Asian American students. Each of the 22 test items is given it’s own thorough analysis drawing upon extensive student interview data as well as more traditional linguistic analysis of task language. Test items and student responses are examined in detail at multiple levels using multiple perspectives. These perspectives include: * analyses of the cognitive processing demands created by the wording and constraints of the multiple-choice tasks; * analyses of the matches and mismatches between children’s world knowledge (including ethnocultural knowledge) with item choices and interpretations, and * analyses of the metalinguistic demands needed to puzzle out correct test choices as compared to what is known about children’s metalinguistic awareness. Special attention is given to the differing comprehension challenges presented by: truncated narratives, excerpted narratives, narratives with gaps, the need to shift reference frames when considering different item foils, and problems caused by such subtleties as changing registers and polarities between passages and foil choices.