ABSTRACT
Student achievement can only be assessed when students understand the questions being asked. Written questions that are age-inappropriately abstract or awkwardly phrased confuse students and therefore yield inaccurate data on what they understand or can do. When third graders are asked to identify the “major points of a passage,” some may think the question is about soldiers or at best a boat trip. If these same students are asked to “tell the important ideas in a story,” more will understand and reading comprehension can be more accurately assessed. Entire state testing programs have wrecked on these shoals.
