A Piecewise Latent Growth Model to Study the Effect of a College Admissions Test Overhaul

• In Event: Studies of Assessment Methods and Validity

Abstract

With the purpose of reducing test score achievement gaps among school sectors, the Chilean government changed the assessment focus from aptitude to curriculum knowledge. The purpose of this study was to estimate the gaps among private and public schools before and after the test overhaul. Using a longitudinal dataset, preliminary findings indicate that the test overhaul reduced the score gap among private and public schools, but only marginally. Unlike multilevel techniques to study change over time, the latent approach allows to handle heteroscedasticity of variance and other real data challenges.

Authors

• Paulina Perez Mejias, Universidad de Chile

• Alberto F. Cabrera, University of Maryland