A validity investigation on the absolute grading system of the English section of the Korean Scholastic Aptitude Test, as well as some suggestions for its improvement

Abstract

The grading system for the English section of the Korean Scholastic Aptitude Test (KSAT) was changed from a relative to an absolute grading system because the Korean government attempted to reduce the revenue of private tutoring in the field of English education and because students’ competition to enter the universities in Korea was too extreme. The results of the KSAT showed that the balloon effect caused the expenditure trend to shift from the English field to other subjects, such as Korean language and mathematics. In addition, the validity investigation indicated that the latest version of the test did not feature an absolute grading system based on the criterion-referenced method (CRM). In fact, it turned out to be an absolute score system in which the cut scores for each grade band of the test are not fixed but varied according to some specific scores. To resolve the current controversy, the English section of the test needs to utilize the genuine CRM, not the norm-referenced method (NRM), to achieve a true absolute grading system. Some discussions and suggestions are provided in terms of the successful implementation of the CRM for the KSAT.