Reliability and Validity

Chapters 5&6

When I was reading the chapter on reliability I kept thinking, like most other people in the class, about the most common form of reliability that we have all experienced…the GRE/SAT. During both I was skeptical, no I was downright confident that they would not yield results that were consistent with my actual body of knowledge.  I do understand that there is legitimacy in the predictive validity of some students with their scores and how their future GPA’s will reflect their intelligence. I however, am an outlier for the reliability of both the SAT and GRE. For both I scored in the lower-middle of the road area and should probably have only had a GPA that was around the C+/B- range. I can proudly say that both in undergrad and here in grad school this is not true. My GPA is near perfect and I work hard to keep that. For me- there is no predictive validity between standardized tests and how I actually preform.

Knowing that not everyone is a good test taker, or will be able to adequately express their body of knowledge on a standardized test will be part of our battle as school counselors. It will be important to be able to help those students who are not good test takers show their potential in different ways. Not to negate standardized tests, but most people are just not wired to be extraordinarily good at them. The fact that our education system places so much emphasis on them and their “predictive quality” disturbs me to the core.   

The more I self-reflect about this class and my life I draw conclusions similar to ones I draw about validity and reliability- it is all relative and able to be affected by extraneous variable. No one in the psychology field or many others would ever argue that there will never be a time when an outside variable could not affect something. It would be silly to even consider this- so why then do we place such emphasis on schools receiving funding based on standardized test scores. Obviously there must be some measure to assess how schools are achieving academic success, and while I have no suggestions for a better system, I seriously disagree with what we are currently using.  

I keep realizing more and more how much I have to learn. I fell so excited when I reflect on what I have learned so far- yet I am intimidated of all I feel I need to learn before I'll actually be doing this job. Hopefully Aassessment helps me on my way!

 Drummond, R. J. and Jones, K. (2010). Assessment procedures for counselors and

            helping professionals. (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.