The Evolution of the Black-White Test Score Gap in Grades K–3: The Fragility of Results
研究发现，由于测试分数是顺序量表，不同的保序变换会显著改变黑人和白人儿童阅读成绩差距的演变趋势，甚至可能逆转差距增长。
Abstract Although both economists and psychometricians typically treat them as interval scales, test scores are reported using ordinal scales. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K) and the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (CNLSY), we examine how order-preserving scale transformations affect the evolution of the black-white reading test score gap from kindergarten entry through third grade. Plausible transformations reverse the growth of the gap in the CNLSY and greatly reduce it in the ECLS-K during the early school years. All growth from entry through first grade and a nontrivial proportion from first to third grade probably reflects scaling decisions.