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Standardized Education
American educators begin articulating ideas that would soon be translated into the formal assessment of student achievement. -
Shifting Views on Education and Testing
Several main currents in the history of American educational testing are established. Formal written tests begins to replace oral examinations administered by teachers and schools at roughly the same time as schools change their mission from servicing the elite to educating the masses. -
American Education to the Forefront
The development and administration of a range of new testing instruments, from measuring mental ability, to attempting to assess how well students were prepared for college, brought to the forefront several critical issues related to testing and the broader goals of American education. -
College Entrance Exams Proposed
Harvard President Charles William Eliot proposes a cooperative system of common entrance examinations that would be acceptable to colleges and professional schools throughout the country, in place of the separate examinations given by each school. -
Tests and Testing Program Proliferate
1,300 achievement tests are on the market, compared to about 400 tests of “mental capacities." 92 High school tests, vocational tests, assessments of athletic ability, and a variety of miscellaneous tests are developed to supplement the intelligence tests, and statewide testing programs become more common. -
Standardized Testing Becomes More Comprehensive and Varied
The College Board begins to develop comprehensive examinations in six subjects. These examinations include performance types of assessment such as essay questions, sight translation of foreign languages, and written compositions. -
The Risks of Overuse of Standardized Testing Becomes Apparent
John Dewey laments the victory of the testers and quantifiers with these words: “Our mechanical, industrialized civilization is concerned with averages, with percents. The mental habit which reflects this social scene subordinates education and social arrangements based on averaged gross inferiorities and superiorities.” -
Support of Standardized Testing Begins to Waver
The University of Iowa initiates the first major statewide testing program for high school students, directed by E.F. Lindquist. By 1930 multiple-choice tests are firmly entrenched in the schools. Not surprisingly, the rapid spread of multiple choice tests kindled debate about their drawbacks. Critics accused them of encouraging memorization and guessing, of representing “reactionary ideals” of instruction, but to no avail. Efficiency and ‘‘objectivity’ won out. -
Multiple States Adopt The Iowa Assessments
The first automatic test scanner is developed, a rudimentary computer called the IBM 805. It remained largely unchanged (save the occasional tweak) until 2005, when the analogies are done away with and a writing section was added. By the late 1930s', Iowa tests are being made available to schools outside the State. -
Overuse, and Confaltion, of Achievement Testing Crystalizes
The marathon four-hour Advanced Placement examinations — which some universities accept for students who want to opt out of introductory college-level classes — remain popular. Nearly 350,000 took the U.S. history AP test last year, the most popular subject test offered. There's also the PSAT, taken in the junior year as preparation for the full-blown SAT and as an assessment for the coveted National Merit Scholarships. -
Standardized Testing Becomes The Measure For All Things
No Child Left Behind education reform is its expansion of state-mandated standardized testing as means of assessing school performance. Now most students are tested each year of grade school as well. Testing of students in the United States is now 150 years old. -
Modern Ideals and Attempts at Reform
Every Student Succeeds Act is passed. ESSA takes steps to reduce standardized testing, and decouples testing and high-stakes decision making. Both are major improvements over No Child Left Behind’s one-size-fits-all approach to accountability, and the U.S. Department of Education’s criteria for granting waivers to the law. Statewide assessments are still required for grades 3-8 and once in high school.