| achievement test |
tests designed to measure what has been learned,
not ability or potential |
| affirmative action |
programs in education and job hiring that recruit
minorities over a wide range but do not use rigid quotas, or those
that use admissions slots (quotas) for minorities in education and
set aside contracts in the economy |
| back-to-basics movement
|
push among some professional educators to stress
the “basics” of reading, writing, and arithmetic and the “canon” of
classic literature |
| cognitive ability |
the capacity for abstract thinking |
| cognitive elite |
term used to describe the upper classes in
society, based on the premise that they possess a genetically based
high intelligence |
| credentialism |
the insistence upon educational credentials only
for their own sake |
| educational deflation
|
the decline in the value of a college education
arising from increases over time in the number of persons graduating
from college; the decline in value of a bachelor’s degree |
| labeling effect |
the effect of educational track (role) assignment
as distinct from the effect of cognitive ability |
| latent functions |
indirect, nonobvious consequences (functions)
emerging from the activities of institutions |
| multiculturalism
movement |
the push to introduce into the elementary, high
school, and college curricula more courses on different and diverse
subcultures and groups, ethnic groups, and gender studies |
| predictive validity |
the extent to which a test accurately predicts
later college grades, or some other criterion such as likelihood of
graduating |
| schooling |
the formal, institutionalized aspects of
education |
| self-fulfilling prophecy
|
the process by which merely applying a label
changes behavior and thus tends to justify the label |
| standardized ability
test |
tests given to large populations and scored with
respect to population averages |
| stereotype threat effect
|
a decrease in ability test score resulting from
the stress and fear of confirming a negative racial, ethnic, or
gender stereotype |
| teacher expectancy
effect |
the effect of the teacher’s expectations on the
student’s actual performance, independent of the student’s ability
|
| tracking |
grouping, or stratifying, students in school on
the basis of ability test scores |