The Cognitive Tests for High School and Beyond: An Assessment

This paper presents an overview of the issues and debates surrounding the selection of test for the High School and Beyond battery, and provides descriptive statistics on these tests by cohort. Comparisons are made between the full tests and the subtests composed of common items utilized by Coleman, Hoffer and Kilgore (1981a). We conclude that a proper assessment of the usefulness of the tests as measures of cognitive growth must await the first follow-up results. The cross-sectional, private-public school differences observed by Coleman et al. persist, however, irrespective of the length of the test, or the specific subject matter analyzed.