Cleland, W. E., & Idstein, P. M. (1980, April). In-level versus out-of-level testing of sixth grade special education students [Paper presentation]. Annual meeting of the National Council of Measurement in Education (NCME), Boston, MA, United States.

One group of students took both the grade-level test and one level below, another group of students took the grade-level test and two levels below. Investigators 1) compared derived scores between levels, 2) assessed the impact of out-of-level testing on percentage of items correct and 3) evaluated the accuracy of locator tests.

Participants were 74 grade 6 special education students.

Reading Vocabulary, Reading Comprehension and Math Comprehension subtests from the 1977 edition of the California Achievement Test.

The general trend was that the further one tested special education students out-of-level, the lower the NCE scores became. Improvements in raw scores on out-of-level tests were subtest dependent (no effect for the math computation subtest). Locator tests underpredicted student performance (higher test levels were appropriate for more students than the locator tests indicated).