Haynes, L. T., & Cole, N. S. (1982, April). Testing some assumptions about on-level versus out-of-level achievement testing . Annual meeting of the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), New York, NY, United States.

This study was designed to determine whether out-of-level testing would improve the reliability of test scores by reducing floor and ceiling effects and whether it would improve student motivation and reduce frustration. These authors also looked at methods of selecting students for OOLT and the agreement of these methods with actual test scores.

Participants were 476 fourth grade students and 472 sixth grade students from eastern Ohio. The participating schools were believed to have a high proportion of students performing below grade level.

There were 3 measures: the Three R's Test, a general achievement battery, and a follow-up survey.

Chance level: Out-of level testing reduced the proportion of chance level scoring, although the number of students who scored at chance level on the in-level was very low. Frustration: Naturally, since not that many students scored at the chance level, there were not large differences on reports of frustration. Level Selection: Correlation between locator test and teacher selection was .49 for fourth grade, and .65 for sixth. Use of locator tests led to apparent ceiling effects for low achieving fourth graders.