THE ALIGNMENT BETWEEN THE O-NET ITEMS (ENGLISH SUBJECT) FOR GRADE 6 STUDENTS WITH THE TEST BLUEPRINT

Abstract

The O-NET which have been built for students in Grade 6, 9 and 12 contained four major subjects. The O-NET score is worth 20% of the final grade of each subject. Therefore, to prepare students to gain high scores in the O-NET tests, some teachers have applied a test blueprint which contains standards and indicators of the O-NET, and created their lesson plans. The aim of this study was to prove that the test blueprint was a good guide for teachers to prepare students for the O-NET (English Subject) instead of using the more Basic Core Curriculum. This study showed how the O-NET test items align with the test blueprint. Moreover, it revealed the frequency of each indicator according to the test blueprint appearing in the O-NET tests. The samples used in this study were 2017 and 2018 O-NET (English Subject). A matching sheet was used as a research tool. The data was divided into two parts. The first part was collected from an investigation of the alignment between the test items and the test blueprint using a test-curriculum alignment method. The second part involved using quantitative data to find the most popular indicator appearing in the tests by using a statistical method. The results demonstrated how the O-NET tests align with the test blueprint item by item and the most frequent indicator appearing in the O-NET tests was F1.1: Gr 6/4 (tell the main idea and answer questions from listening to and reading dialogues, simple tales and stories) while the least frequent was F1.2: Gr 6/2 (use order/ requests to give instructions).