This is a story that needs to be told: the sordid history of standardized testing. I wrote about it in chapter four of my book “Left Back” (2000).
Many scholarly
dissertations have documented the story. Others have tried to alert the public
about the assumptions embedded in the fabric of standardized testing.
But the
policymakers don’t read or don’t care.
The
very idea that the essential intelligence and worth of a human being can be
scientifically measured by multiple choice questions is fraught with flawed and
dangerous assumptions.
When we then use those measures to judge the worthiness
of teachers and schools, the damage the tests do is multiplied.
Steven Singer has done excellent research on the history of standardized testing and summarizes it here.
The
standardized test was created in an era when the new field of psychology was
trying to establish itself as a “science.” The psychologists earnestly believed
that intelligence was innate, inherited, and could not be changed. They also
believed that intelligence varied by race and ethnicity. Tomes were written
about the superiority of whites over other races, and among whites, the
superiority of Northern Europeans over Southern Europeans. This belief was
conventional wisdom among psychologists.
One
of the men who wrote and believed this was the Princeton psychologist Carl C.
Brigham. He joined the College Board as its senior psychologist and created the
first Scholastic Aptitude Test.
Once
you know this story, you will never forget it. It will change the way you view
the tests forever. You will ask why federal and state officials are so
determined to impose them. You will wonder why anyone takes these biased
instruments so seriously. They are social constructions, neither objective nor
scientific.
Singer
writes:
“Make
no mistake – standardized testing has been a tool of social control for the
last century. And it remains one today.
“Twisted
statistics, made up math, nonexistent or biased research – these are the
“scientific” supports for standardized testing. It has never been demonstrated
that these kinds of tests can accurately assess either intelligence or
knowledge, especially as that knowledge gets more complex. But there is an
unspoken agreement in political circles to pretend that testing is rock solid and
produces scores that can be relied on to make decisions that will have
tremendous effects on the lives of students, teachers, parents and communities.
“Our
modern assessments are holdovers from the 1910s and ‘20s, an age when
psychologists thought they could isolate the racial markers for intelligence
and then improve human beings through selective breeding like you might with
dogs or cats.
“I’m
not kidding.
“It
was called eugenics.
“Psychologists
like Carl Brigham, Robert Yerkes, and Lewis Terman were trying to find a way to
justify the social order. Why is it that certain people are at the top and
others at the bottom? What is the best way to decide who belongs where?”
Their
tests justified the social order. Those at the top deserved their privilege.
They had the highest test scores. Those at the bottom had the lowest scores and
were where they belonged. At the bottom. A few might rise, just enough to keep
the fraud going. They would lecture those they left behind to try harder. And
the social order would remain unchanged.
