Lombardo 1 Anna Lombardo Professor Bedell CAS 137H 24 Oct 2012 The Testing Transformation It was hundreds of years

ago when civil service exams were first administered to individuals of Confucian society in order to determine the competency of test-takers and predict their performance in their chosen fields; according to Dan Fletcher of Time magazine, this is the earliest record of standardized testing in history (Standardized Testing). Since then, the concept of this kind of testing has experienced enormous growth and expansion. Within the United States, many of the goals for standardized testing have changed and have consequently altered the practical uses for the tests. An intense period of concern about lower-than-average test scores that took place throughout the twentieth century resulted in a transformation of these tests purposes. While tests like these were originally geared towards measuring the performance of specific students, they are today used to estimate an entire schools academic efficiency. Due to worry over the deteriorating quality of public schools in the twentieth century, the focus of standardized tests shifted from determining individual competency to gauging the capability of schools to meet national standards. Contemporary standardized testing encompasses an enormous variety of different tests whose specific purposes depend on the context in which the test is given. According to an article written by Gabriel Quintana in the Encyclopedia of the Social and Cultural Foundations of Education, no precise definition of standardized testing has been agreed on, and debate as to the meaning of the term continues (756). However, Quintana goes on to emphasize that all standardized tests share the same four general qualities: scores are compared to a norm group; all

Lombardo 2 participants take the test under the same standardized conditions; the tests are created by specialists in the subject area of the test; and the tests are graded objectively. Tests given under these four criteria are considered to be standardized in the sense that we understand it today. Even the first standardized tests possessed these characteristics. Creation of the tests had already been in the works by early anthropologists and psychologists like Sir Francis Galton and James Catell when Alfred Binet stepped onto the scene. In the dawn of the twentieth century, Binet, a French psychologist, worked with his student, Theodore Simon, to generate what is considered to be the first standardized test of intelligence. Soon after, an American psychologist named Lewis Terman revised the test so it could be used in the United States. While this marks the advent of the contemporary standardized tests existence in the United States, over the next two decades or so, tests like Binets and Termans were typically not implemented in schools. Rather, the United States used them for military purposes, especially during the American stint in World War I. Army officials used the tests to evaluat[e] recruits and [assign] jobs during the war (Testing in Schools). It was, however, the extraordinary concept that tests could be used to easily gauge the intelligence of large numbers of people in a short period of time that brought the tests out of the barracks and into the classroom. The 1930s saw a jump in the use of standardized tests in schools. Also during this time, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), a type of standardized test now widely accepted as an essential facet of college applications, was first introduced by Harvard as a means of selecting scholarship students (Lorts 252). It was not until after World War II, however, that the usage of both standardized testing and tests like the SAT began to expand. Interestingly, the cause for this surge in testing came as a result of an event that occurred during the Cold War- the Russian launch of the satellite Sputnik. This brought about major concerns that American schoolchildren

Lombardo 3 were falling behind Russian schoolchildren, academically. Thinking that the future of the United States was in jeopardy, the United States immediately authorized the National Defense Education Act, which sought to expand and strengthen testing programs by providing funding for such endeavors (Educational Testing). In a sense, this move by Congress was the stepping stone of a series of fundamental changes in the concept of standardized testing. When Binet first created his intelligence test in 1905, the central goal of the exam was simply to measure the IQ of a particular test-taker. While that goal remained essentially the same with the authorization of the National Defense Education Act in 1958, the purpose of giving the exam to students was also geared more towards improving the quality of national education more than it had been before. This idea was especially reinforced by the fact that schools who turned out higher numbers of students performing below average received funding so, the government hoped, those numbers would go down. The tests had now focused their attention less on the individual students and more on the quality of schools that they attended. This trend continued throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties. The American people became increasingly concerned that schools were not meeting the admittedly ambiguous academic standards that would prepare students to meet the demands of the U.S. economy (Testing in Schools). For this reason, in the late 1970s minimal academic standards were set that schools had to meet. By the dawn of the 1980s, the majority of U.S. schools had established programs that put their students on track to meet these standards. Realistically, experts agree that students showed relatively stable achievement levels in both reading and math during this time (Testing in Schools). However, still in the midst of the Cold War and caught up in the hysteria of the issue, schools remained steadfast in their undertakings to meet the standards that

Lombardo 4 had been set. Here, we can see an even more drastic shift to the nations emphasis on schools, rather than the students in them. During the late eighties and throughout the nineties, states continued to deliver tests to students. In 1997, President Bill Clinton proposed to authorize national standardized testing, but Congress rejected his proposal and, a year later, put a permanent ban on national tests (Testing in Schools). The push for standardized testing was all but forgotten, however. The Republican Congresss fierce opposition to the proposal shows just how strong the trend was becoming; clashes between groups on both sides of the argument were becoming more frequent. It is not surprising to find, then, that this aspect of education became a major campaigning platform for the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Bush won out and, in 2001, introduced what can be considered one of the most important steps in the testing shift to date: a program called No Child Left Behind (NCLB). NCLB has triggered large reverberations in the twenty-first century American public education system. This act has several key assets which have heavily influenced the use of standardized testing in schools. According to the Encyclopedia of Educational Leadership and Administration, one of the essential characteristics of NCLB is setting accountability standards for schools, school districts, and states... [by] including new state testing requirements designed to improve education (Quintana 756). The wording of this demand embodies the shift from an emphasis on the student to an emphasis on the school. Nowhere in the statement, perhaps besides the cleverly written and emotionally appealing title, has the government recognized the importance of seeing to individualized education. It appears that their concern is essentially to ensure that the majority of a student body is able to pass an exam and facilitate the schools

Lombardo 5 endeavors to meet national standards. Fletcher, too, agrees that these tests have simply become a means of assessing school performance ( Standardized Testing). Today, not much has changed. NCLB is still in effect and, due to one of the elements of the act, standards of achievement increase each school year. To accomplish this, the same amount of testing is required and, in addition, more rigorous preparation for the exams must be completed by teachers and students. States have also begun to introduce more standardized tests aside from nationally mandated exams. Pennsylvania, for example, recently introduced the Keystone Exam, a test that measures reading, math, science, and history comprehension. This exam is influential because students cannot graduate from high school unless they meet the national standards in all of the subjects in which they are tested. Interestingly, tests like these seem to be swinging back in the direction of determining individual competency. However, the emphasis in essence remains on students as a whole, since student scores are compared to a larger norm: the academic standards set by the government. In a sequence of small changes in views on education and a series of federal acts, standardized testing has undergone an enormous transformation from what it was in the early twentieth century to what it is today. Its original function, as an intelligence test used to determine the mental ability of young men who wanted to become soldiers, evolved into a massive, nationalized system of tests which is currently administered to students of all ages every year. The standardized test has retained its ability to gauge skill level while minimalizing the importance of individual students and instead puts its focus on a larger group- the school itself. Only after the generation who has gone through this testing enters the workforce will we be able to determine whether this was truly an effective indicator of student competence.

Lombardo 6 Works Cited Flectcher, Dan. Standardized Testing. Time magazine. Time, Inc. December 11, 2009. Web. 17 October 2012. Jost, Kenneth. Testing in Schools. CQ Press. Volume 11, Issue 15 (2001). Web. 22 Oct. 2012. Lorts, Justin T. "SAT." Dictionary of American History. Ed. Stanley I. Kutler. 3rd ed. Vol. 7. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003. 252. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. Lunenburg, Fred C. "No Child Left Behind." Encyclopedia of Educational Leadership and Administration. Ed. Fenwick W. English. Vol. 2. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Reference, 2006. 699-703. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. Quintana, Gabriel. "Standardized Testing." Encyclopedia of the Social and Cultural Foundations of Education. Ed. Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr. Vol. 2. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2009. 756-757. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. Shaffer, H.B. Educational Testing. CQ Press. (1958). Web. 22 Oct. 2012.