Hastings, J. Thomas

(b. 1911, Louisville, Kentucky; d. 1992, Urbana, Illinois). Ph.D., University of Chicago; B.A., Ball State University.

Hastings was instrumental in developing the connection between the school curriculum and educational testing, program evaluation, and higher education. He studied at the University of Chicago with Ralph Tyler and was a contemporary of Benjamin Bloom and Lee J. Cronbach, and with some of his contemporaries (Bloom, Hastings, and Madaus) he published the seminal works Handbook on Formative and Summative Evaluation of Student Learning and Evaluation to Improve Learning.

His only campus was the University of Illinois, where he had a profound impact, as well as being a colleague to measurement people around the world, including Ralph Tyler, William F. Connell, Robert Stake, Christine McGuire, Ben Bloom, Jack Easley, George Madaus, Jack Merwin, and Barry MacDonald.

[Page 182]He started work in 1942 as the University of Illinois' University Examiner (a position similar to that held by Ralph Tyler at The Ohio State University), assisting faculty in improving evaluation of their courses.

With Lee Cronbach, he cofounded the Center for Instructional Research and Curriculum Evaluation (CIRCE). He was the first Director of the Illinois Statewide Testing Program, the main focus for CIRCE at the time, and one of the organizers of the group called the Directors of Statewide Testing Programs.

He was among the first faculty in the Bureau of Research and Service in the College of Education and was instrumental in recruiting additional faculty. He was sought over and over again for committees and assignments involving contentious issues because everyone knew that he would give them a fair and honest hearing. The scope of Hastings' work was far reaching, as is well demonstrated by his key role in the reorganization of Japan's national education system after World War II.

According to Mary Anne Bunda, one of Hastings' many students, he once hooked up a washing machine motor to run a desk calculator to do a factor analysis for his dissertation. He was Cronbach's Boswell.