Definitions for "Criterion-Referenced Test"
Designed to report whether students' achievement meets some established standard or threshold of performance. Scores are usually reported in two forms: a numeric scale score and the student's proficiency status, using such terms as basic : proficient : advanced or pass/fail.
Test with a predetermined standard of performance that is tied to a specific domain of behavior
According to A Lexicon of Learning: What Educators Mean When They Say... from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), criterion-referenced tests are tests designed to measure how thoroughly a student has learned a particular body of knowledge without regard to how well other students have learned it. Most nationally standardized achievement tests are norm-referenced, meaning that a student's performance is compared to how well students in the norming group did when the test was normed. Criterion-referenced tests are directly related to the curriculum of a particular school district or state and are scored according to fixed criteria.