During this period, psychologists Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon in Paris developed the forerunner of today’s intelligence test to help identify children likely to have trouble in school—but their test was given to each child individually and was therefore quite expensive. As World War I funneled recruits from all educational backgrounds into the military, commanders needed quick ways to determine which soldiers were capable of learning particular skills.
Searching for a way to evaluate recruits in a fast and cost-effective manner, two group tests of ability were developed for the Army—these tests were the forerunners of today’s group standardized tests used in schools. After the war was over, psychologists and educators began to realize the benefits that standardized tests might bring to the nation’s schools. In 1923, the Stanford Achievement Test became the first group achievement test used in the schools.
This test, currently in its ninth revision, continues to be one of the most popular group achievement tests today. Group standardized achievement testing caught on, and in the 1920s and 1930s became the darling of American public education. Psychologists placed great faith in the value of such tests to diagnose a student’s learning abilities. In fact, by the 1930s, psychologists believed that the group standardized achievement tests available at that time were superior to individually administered tests because of their objectivity, ease of scoring, and standardized conditions.
They looked forward to a time when schools would test first graders to help plan the type of instruction most suited to them. They envisioned testing all children every year not only to determine how successfully they were learning but also to figure out which teaching strategies worked the best. Educators eagerly embraced these tests because they thought the tests offered an objective and accurate way of determining a student’s needs. Group standardized tests allowed educators to evaluate many children at a small cost per child—certainly at a cost much lower than for individual testing.
Unfortunately,group standardized tests never lived up to their early promise. Researchers discovered that the very characteristics that make standardized tests so efficient and cost-effective also limit their validity in evaluating the learning of individual students. By the 1960s and 1970s, after decades of ability grouping based on standardized tests, it became clear that such practices were not acceptable. Parents sued school districts for placing their children in rigid educational “tracks” based on test scores. Parents and civil rights groups won a series of landmark court cases challenging ability grouping (or tracking), and the courts told the schools that they could no longer place children into different instructional groups on the basis of group standardized test results. Researchers also began to identify racial and gender biases in group standardized tests.
The Accountability Movement
Just as the courts began to restrict the use of standardized tests for ability grouping, taxpayers began to demand of their schools more accountability. By the early 1980s, voters began to demand evidence that schools were spending their tax money responsibly. Parents became suspicious of the ways educators gauged how effectively they taught students. The public became suspicious of any but the most objective measures of student performance.To parents, group standardized tests seemed to be the ideal tool to gauge academic progress. Politicians began to promise to boost the amount of testing and the consequences of test scores for students, teachers, and educational systems themselves.Today many states use standardized tests in “high-stakes testing”as the basis for:
- Promotion and retention
- Graduation
- Eligibility for remedial programs
- Eligibility for gifted programs
- Teacher evaluations, including firing teachers whose students consistently perform poorly on standardized tests
- Evaluations of administrators, firing administrators in schools and school districts in which students consistently perform below national standards
- School district funding
- Creating “flu lists” of students who consistently perform poorly on standardized tests and are told to stay home during test week
- Intentionally classifying underperforming students as being eligible for special education classes to exclude them from taking standardized tests
- Teaching only items included on standardized tests and neglecting important subject matter that the tests don’t cover
