Standardized Tests

Beginnings of Standardized Testing in the United States

In the mid- to late 1800s, cities in the United States grew at a rapid pace. Contributing to this growth was a large influx of immigrants. To educate and assimilate the growing populace, states established universal schooling. As the costs of this public education increased, the pressure to show that the money was a wise investment also increased. The desire for accountability contributed to the growth of standardized testing in America. In Massachusetts, for example, rapid growth meant that school supervisors could no longer administer oral examinations [Page 853]to students. Horace Mann, then secretary of the Board of Education of Massachusetts, replaced oral examinations with a standardized, written examination. From the very beginning, the written test faced criticism in that the content tested was narrow and covered the basic subject areas, whereas the objective of the schools was to provide a comprehensive education. In addition, the results of the written examination were designed to measure student achievement but were also used to make comparisons among schools and to drive reform.

Initial testing in schools measured student achievement in subject areas. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, testing development focused on measuring mental capacity, that is, examinees' potential for learning. The trend toward intelligence testing and departure from achievement testing during this period might be in part due to the lack of any effect of educational reforms on the improvement of achievement test scores. Administrators looked to the innate ability of the students (i.e., intelligence) for answers to low student achievement.

In France at the turn of the 20th century, Alfred Binet, working with Theodore Simon, developed psychological methods to measure the mental ability of students. Their work resulted in the Binet-Simon test, which formed the basis of mental testing in America. Binet and Simon created the test for the specific purpose of identification of students with mental challenges who might benefit from special training. The test required the student to complete a set of short tasks related to everyday life. Though the test assigned a single, age-based score, Binet refrained from interpreting this score for purposes other than identification of students who might benefit from intervention. He warned people against reading the results too narrowly and reiterated that the test was not designed to measure the construct of intelligence.

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