Test Preparation and Students’ Performance: The Case of the Colombian High School Exit Exam

Abstract

Standardized test scores play a central role in determining college admission decisions in both developed and emerging countries. For that reason, many courses are offered by schools and other educational institutions to prepare students for the exams. However, it is still unclear whether additional preparation has a positive and significant effect. The objective of this paper is to use the results of the Colombian high-school exit examination to gain a better understanding of the relationship between preparation and test results. Our results show that, on average, preparatory activities are associated with an increase of approximately 0.06 standard deviations in scores.

Analyzing the efficacy of comprehensive testing: a comprehensive evaluation

“…These variables include test preparation, test anxiety, placement tests, and high-grade points. For instance, in their study, Soler et al (2020) sought to gain a better understanding of the relationship between preparation and test results in the Colombian high-school exit examination. The findings revealed that engagement in preparatory activities was associated with an increase of approximately 0.06 standard deviations in scores.…”

Novice Students’ Experience of Taking Toeic Preparation Class: A Phenomenological Case Study

“…This finding is in line with another TP study in Columbian context, where TP was claimed to have modest impact on students' score gains. However, this minor effect could have a significant impact on students whose score is near to the passing grade (Soler et al, 2020).…”

“…In one study, TP is claimed to correlate with low quality of instruction (Blazar & Pollard, 2017). On the other hands, some studies explored how TP positively affect students' performances, such as listening performance (Winke & Lim, 2017), and score gains (Knoch et al, 2020;Soler et al, 2020). Winke and Lim (2017) conducted an experimental study in which 63 students were divided into three groups and given the same listening practice tests.…”

“…For more than two decades, studies on test preparation mostly go around two points of view: teachers and students. Research reporting teachers' perspectives emphasizes differences in teaching preparation methods and activities (Wagner & Koch, 2021), teachers' beliefs and practices (Gebril & Eid, 2017), and teachers' washback (Nguyen & Gu, 2020), and the effectiveness of test preparation; whether or not test preparation are able to raise students' test performance (Knoch et al, 2020;Soler et al, 2020).…”