Introduction

The notion of criterion-referenced educational testing is usually traced back to Glaser and Klaus (1962) or to Glaser (1963). While this is relatively recent given the long history of educational measurement, criterion-referenced testing has emerged as an important tool in educational testing circles over the past few decades. Although only a few decades old, the central concepts of criterion-referenced testing have been around implicitly throughout history and pervade the ways humans deal with the world. For instance, in Judges 12: 5–6, fugitives from Ephraim trying to cross the Jordan river were tested by the Gilead guards with the following consequences:

5 … The men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an E'phra-im-ite? If he said, Nay;

6 Then said unto him, Say now Shib-bo-leth: and he said Sib'-bo-leth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the E'phra-im-ites forty and two thousand.

Similarly, though with less serious outcomes, Conway Twitty sings, “Don't call him a cowboy 'till you've seen him ride.” Thus, the underlying principles of directly referencing ability to a particular domain of behavior run deep in human interactions. How these principles are applied to language assessment is the focus of this book.

This chapter will explore the competing paradigms that are represented by the norm-referenced testing predominant throughout most of the past hundred years or so, and the relatively more recent development of criterion-referenced testing.