Tyler, Ralph (1902–1994)

The educator Ralph W. Tyler is perhaps best known for his theory that what needs to be measured in the classroom is student learning. As a high school science teacher in Pierre, South Dakota, in 1923, it occurred to him that the tests that students were being given were measuring only a low level of science mastery and not necessarily what students had learned. Throughout his 70-year career, Tyler continued to pursue the question of how to effectively measure student learning and develop curriculum that would meet the unique student learning needs in American classrooms. The challenge of how best to measure and assess student learning still occupies educators today.

Tyler had two areas of focus throughout his professional life: curriculum development and evaluation. He worked with many notable educators who shaped some of his views on education, including his mentors Charles Judd and W. W. Charters, with whom he first connected as a doctoral student at the University of Chicago. Afterward he followed his mentor W. W. Charters to Ohio State University. There he worked in the area of testing and evaluation as the director of accomplishment testing. In this position he continued to find ways to link the objectives to be taught with the measurement that was used to determine the students' mastery of the subject. He was looking for a variety of measurements that would demonstrate student mastery beyond the use of a paper-and-pencil test. He wanted to collect artifacts of students' work that demonstrated their mastery of the topic. This was a radical change from the thinking of the time, where paper-and-pencil testing constituted the norm. In addition, he felt that successful teaching and learning techniques could be determined through the use of a more scientific approach.

In 1931, Tyler brought the scientific approach to evaluating educational practice in the Eight-Year Study, the purpose of which was to evaluate high school programs. Tyler had a major role in the evaluation portion of the study. From this work, Eugene R. Smith, Ralph W. Tyler, and the Evaluation Staff authored Appraising and Recording Student Progress Evaluation, Records and Reports in the Thirty Schools.

An exponent of the progressive thought of his time, Tyler believed that schools needed to present subject matter in a way that would meet the needs of both the learner and society. Following his work on the Eight-Year Study, he authored Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, published in 1949. This brief book has had a lasting impact in the field of curriculum development. According to Tyler, curriculum development should define appropriate learning objectives, establish useful learning experiences, organize learning experiences to have a maximum cumulative effect, and evaluate the curriculum and revise those aspects that did not prove to be effective. These remain the major considerations of curricular planning today.

Later, Tyler was one of the primary architects of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). In 1963, President Kennedy's commissioner of education was interested in producing a national test to measure the progress of students across the United States. The hope was to establish national standards for education and to report student progress state by state and district by district. Francis Keppel, the commissioner of education, approached John Gardner, president of the Carnegie Corporation, to fund the project. Tyler was approached to undertake the task of developing the test. From his background in testing and measurement, he viewed this project as a way to “take the pulse” of the educational system. He developed a test that sampled students and gave an overall view of their progress. This idea of a national test might have met with great opposition, but with the selection of Tyler, widely considered the leader in educational testing, the educational community decided to trust the new testing process.

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