By Dr. John Trotter

As usual, Catlady is right. There is virtually ALWAYS a positive one-to-one relationship with test scores and the child's Socio-economic Status (SES). The collective test scores for each school (unless cheating is an intervening variable) simply indicate how many students are on free and reduced lunches. The test scores are so predictive of free and reduced lunch scores. There is a strong correlation. That's it. It's just that simple. The CRCT is indeed a joke. The ACT and SAT are norm-referenced tests. All serious tests are norm-referenced. The criterion-referenced tests (like the CRCT) are for public consumption -- to try to fool the people into thinking real "progress" is being made. (c) MACE, 2009