Do College Reading Placement Tests Measure College Reading Skills?
By Gary K. Probst Email:probstgk@pg.cc.md.us College reading placement tests play an important role in placement of students in most colleges. These tests can determine if a person is accepted into a college, not permitted to take certain courses, or is required to take a reading and study skills class. The terms used to describe the reading skills measured by these placement tests are very general impressive sounding cognitive terms. However, the test manual that comes with these tests contains a large amount of statistical information that tells very little about the exact reading skills measured by these tests. What is the purpose of this article? It is the purpose of this article to describe the exact reading skills measured by the following tests: • Accuplacer Reading Test • Nelson-Denny Reading test • Regent’s Testing Program Reading Test of the University of Georgia • Texas Academic Skills Program (TASP) Reading Test. From the analysis of the skills on college reading placement
