University Examinations and Standardized Testing: Principles, Experience, and Policy Options

摘要

As countries today renew their use of educational testing, new concerns have arisen about how better to manage such testing. China provides one example of the new emphasis on purposefully managing the policies toward educational testing. In September 1984, the Chinese government asked the Economic Development Institute of the World Bank to assist the officials of the Ministry of Education in thinking through some of the policy options for examinations and standardized testing. As a result, a meeting was held in April 1985. The book summarizes the descriptions of testing systems in selected OECD countries and the advice given to the government officials following the meeting. The attention devoted to problems of logistics and to economies of scale are perhaps more pertinent to large, heterogeneous countries such as China. But the book contends that many of the principles discussed at the meeting and presented here are applicable to developing countries generally. (Copyright (c) 1988, The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank.)