Valerie Strauss: Is the Obsession with Standardized Testing Ending?
Standardized testing has been used in American schools for a century, though never on the scale of the past twenty years. It first was introduced into some schools as IQ tests, which were used (wrongly) to judge students’ innate ability and to assign them to different tracks, which then determined their life outcomes. I wrote about the IQ tests in my 2000 book “Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reforms.” The psychologists who created the tests believed that IQ was innate, inherited, and fixed. They asserted that the tests demonstrated the superiority of whites who spoke English well. Their views were welcomed and used by racists and anti-immigrant groups to support their policies. They were used to defend segregation and to restrict immigration. Their critics pointed out that the tests measured culture and life circumstances, not innate intelligence.
One of the psychologists who developed IQ tests and wrote a racist book about the results was Carl C. Brigham of Princeton. Brigham later created the prototype for the multiple-choice SAT in the 1930s, which replaced the essay-based “College Boards” in 1941.
Many schools used standardized tests in the second half of the twentieth century. Some states required periodic state tests, like the Iowa tests. No state required CONTINUE READING: Valerie Strauss: Is the Obsession with Standardized Testing Ending? | Diane Ravitch's blog
