Alignment Between The Shanghai Physics Test Paper Of Senior Middle School Entrance Examination And The Physics Content Standard

National curriculum standards are the bases of textbook compilation, teaching,assessment and propositions of examination. Examination is the main approach to testwhether teaching and learning achieve the curriculum standard. Entrance examination tosenior middle school, as study achievement examination, has a strong guidance for juniormiddle school teaching. Alignment between curriculum standard and standardized test isa key to success in the reform of standards-based curriculum. It’s a significant issue tosociety, science pedagogy, and test validation.Based on the Porter alignment analysis framework of United States, this paperstudies the alignment between the physics content standard of junior high school inShanghai and physics test papers of senior middle school entrance examination form2009to2013years. The study constitutes of3parts:(1) How to construct a localizationanalysis framework to check the alignment between physics paper and physics contentstandard based on existed theoretical achievements?(2) How to analyze physics contentstandard and physics papers according to the alignment analysis framework?(3) What arethe specific characteristics of the alignment between each type of physics papers andphysics content standard?The results show that all of the Porter alignment indices between physics curriculumstandards and five years of physics test papers are low, with the value ranging from0.59to0.70. There are two reasons for this. On one hand, physics curriculum standard has awide range of content but low cognitive levels. On the other hand, the physics test papersgive higher priority to the content of “electromagnetic movement” and the cognitive skillof “understanding”. Obviously, the different emphasis of the exam and curriculum makethe Porter alignment index much lower than the P value in other researches. The researchhas also found a positive correlation between Porter alignment indices and average scores as well as a negative correlation between Porter alignment indices and standarddeviations.Only when there is a good match between teachers’ operationalization and thestandardized test’s operationalization of the official content standard in terms of contentand cognitive emphases will students have a good likelihood to perform well on thestandardized test, and only when there exists such a good match can standardized test foraccountability be both effective and fair. Thus, ongoing study of the alignment betweencontent standard and the standardized test is necessary for any education system, andalignment studies may be used as an approach of teacher professional development forimproving student achievement.