-
A team of U.S. colleges develops the first standardized admissions test
In the late 1800s, a group of leading American universities was concerned about not having a universal way to determine if students were prepared for college-level course work. They formed the College Entrance Examination Board, and working together they administered the first standardized exam in 1901. For the first time, students could take one entrance exam for several universities instead of taking a separate exam for each one. -
Alfred Binet
In 1905 French psychologist Alfred Binet began developing a standardized test of intelligence. Eventually to be incorporated into a version of the modern IQ test, dubbed the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test. By World War I, standardized testing was standard practice: aptitude quizzes called Army Mental Tests were conducted to assign U.S. servicemen jobs during the war effort. -
Period: to
History of standaradized testing
-
Scholastic Aptitude Test
What is the SATThe SAT came first, founded in 1926 as the Scholastic Aptitude Test by the College Board, a nonprofit group of universities and other educational organizations. The original test lasted 90 minutes and consisted of 315 questions testing knowledge of vocabulary and basic math and even including fill-in-the-blank analogies (e.g., blue:sky::____:grass). In 1926, more than 8,000 students took the first SAT. -
SAT growth
The test grew and by 1930 assumed its now familiar form, with separate verbal and math tests. By the end of World War II, the test was accepted by enough universities that it became a standard rite of passage for college-bound high school seniors. -
First automatic test scanner
Grading was at first done manually, an arduous task that undermined standardized testing's goal of speedy mass assessment. It would take until 1936 to develop the first automatic test scanner, a rudimentary computer called the IBM 805. It used electrical current to detect marks made by special pencils on tests. (Modern optical scanners opt to use simple No. 2 pencils, as their darker lead is most scanner-friendly.) -
The SAT is normalized to make test scores as fair as possible
Because the SAT was administered a few times a year, colleges received SAT scores from several different versions of the test. In order to make sure that the scores from one version of a test could be compared to scores from a different version, the test was normalized in 1941. For the next 50 years, every form of the test was linked back to the 1941 tests. -
ACT test was created
In 1959 an education professor at the University of Iowa named Everett Franklin Lindquist developed the ACT as a competitor to the SAT. Originally an acronym for American College Testing, the exam included a section that guided students toward a course of study by asking questions about their interests. -
The SAT begins offering fee waivers
Students from low-income families received fee waivers for the first time in 1969. The fee-waiver program has since been expanded to make sure that all eligible students who want to apply to college but can’t afford the registration fee have access to the SAT. -
The College Board hits bookstores
The College Board published two books in 1984 to help familiarize students with the SAT and the Achievement Tests, now known as SAT Subject Tests. -
No child left behind
No Child Left Behind education reform was 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. That means that by the time they graduate to college — where the essay, the experiment and the case study still rule — the reprieve from bubble-filling and time limits is a welcome one indeed. The real problem teachers are having with the Act is the emphasis placed on standardized test scores. -
Changes to the SAT reflect what students are learning in school
Even more changes were made to the SAT in 2005 to better reflect the subjects being taught in high school classrooms. Quantitative comparison and analogy questions were removed, -
ACT vs SAT
ACT is more commonly accepted in the Midwest and South, while schools on the coasts show a preference for the SAT. Students show a propensity for one test or the other: the SAT is geared toward testing logic, while the ACT is considered more a test of accumulated knowledge.
