ABSTRACT
Federal laws as interpreted by court decisions and applied to testing programs confer rights and impose responsibilities that must be satisfied by both testing entities and test takers for test use to be judged fair. A test of practical significance using a more stringent judgmental criterion would have provided a more technically sound basis for a finding of disparate impact. When the purpose of the test is to measure a test taker’s relative standing on a construct or attainment of specified proficiencies, testing modifications prevent test takers from fully accessing the construct and create scores with construct underrepresentation that invalidates the intended normative or criterion-referenced score interpretations. Admittedly, individual inquiries are time-consuming and potentially costly for testing organizations with large test taker populations. Test security and release, aspects of due process fairness, implicate a combination of rights and responsibilities for both test takers and test administrators.
