How Did Horace Mann Use Standardized Tests Measure Ability Or Achievement?

There is a strong irony in our emphasis on standardized testing in a country that promotes diversity among career options for students. Tests are mandated throughout the country and students spend days preparing for the multiple exams they have to complete. Many students pay hundreds of dollars for tutoring and prep materials to improve their scores on these standardized tests. Even school syllabuses have shifted to help prepare for the big standardized tests such as the ACT and SAT.This frenzy behind standardized testing is understandable however, since colleges put a lot of weightage on standardized test scores and the government hands out thousands of dollars of scholarships to both students and schools based on the results of these exams. The Washington Post estimates the market to be a two billion annual business.

Standardized testing has been around since the early 1900’s. Today, it determines a high school student’s future. Every year juniors in high school start to prepare months in advance for the SAT’s and ACT’s. Along with the test itself, comes stress that is not necessary. The debate of standardized tests defining a student’s academic ability or not has become a recent popular controversial topic. Many colleges and universities are starting to have test optional applications because they are realizing that a single test score does not demonstrate the knowledge of a student. There is more value in a student that should rule an acceptance or rejection. In the article, “SAT Scores Help Colleges Make Better Decisions” Capterton states, “The SAT has proven to be valid, fair, and a reliable data tool for college admission” (Capterton). Capterton, president of the College Board, believes that the SAT’s and ACT’s should be used to determine a student’s acceptance because it is an accurate measure. What Capterton and deans of admissions of colleges and universities don’t know is the abundant amount of resources upper class families have for preparation, the creative talents a student has outside of taking tests, and the amount of stress they put on a 17 year old.

Forms of standardized testing have been around since the Sui dynasty time period, in which the Sui and Tang dynasties conducted imperial examinations in order to test those that hoped for government positions. Many other cultures have adopted it as well and refined it into almost an art form; for example, the United States. The United States began to conduct standardized testing around the time of the First World War; these tests measured the abilities of soldiers in order to give them jobs according to their results. Although the approaches to standardized tests are very different, the same general concept is the same. Since then there has been an increase of standardized tests: SAT, ACT, ASVAB, TAKS, STAAR, and EOC’s, just to name a few.

Einstein once said, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Likewise, if a poor test-taker is judged by their SAT score, they could be forced to attend an inadequate institute of higher education. For decades, the SAT has been “the test” that makes or breaks a student's chances of getting into their top college. Generally, the privileged populace do well, but minorities and women do not come out as strong and are therefore limited to college choice. The SAT has proven to be an unsuitable, biased method for predicting success of students in college.

The use of standardized examinations have long been debated in American society. In fact, the last several years have seen an immense shift from the prioritization of standardized testing to more holistic measurements of student achievement. Despite this shift, many school districts across the nation and college/university entrance requirements still place a significant, if not pivotal, emphasis on test-taking and standardized exam results. Throughout this paper, I will explore 1) the history of standardized testing, 2) arguments for and against its practice, as well as 3) situate the consequences of its use in one of the three philosophical goals of schooling. All of this will subsequently paint an investigation into the purpose of schooling in American society.

Testing has been used for centuries in many different ways, not just to test student intelligence levels. According to an article written in Time, the earliest form of a standardized test comes from China where government leaders would be tested on their knowledge of Confucius and poetry. The article continues with the inclusion of testing during the Industrial Revolution. The testing during this period took children who were not in school and measured their knowledge of subjects that students in schools learned. As time went on, more and more advances came to the testing scene. New products included a revised version of the test, called the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test, and professionals developed the test scanner by 1936. These inventions improved the time necessary to receive results from an IQ test. Today, tests, like the

In America, a child is expected, as early as the age of five years old, to start taking tests that will measure their skills and determine if they are ready to move on to the next level of their education. This concept of testing in the United States is not new or uncommon. Standardized achievement tests have been used since the 1800s. In the beginning of the 20th century, there were many acclaimed colleges, and a few universities, all across the nation. Unfortunately during this time there was no systematic assessment to test the abilities or knowledge of the possible incoming students, because of this the College Board was created. Soon after the SAT or the Scholastic Aptitude Test came about. Before this type of standardized testing, individual

“No issue in the U.S. Education is more controversial than (standardized) testing. Some people view it as the linchpin of serious reform and improvement, others as a menace to quality teaching and learning” (Phelps). A tool that educators use to learn about students and their learning capabilities is the standardized test. Standardized tests are designed to give a common measure of a student’s performance. Popular tests include the SAT, IQ tests, Regents Exams, and the ACT. “Three kinds of standardized tests are used frequently in schools: achievement, diagnostic, and aptitude” (Woolfolk 550). Achievement tests can be used to help a teacher assess a student’s strengths and weaknesses in a

“High school grades reflect years of effort and are more reliable assessment of college potential than test scores.” Historians detected that standardized testing started back in the seventh-century in China. The government of China began to organize written exams to select people for the civil service. Also many educators try to make sure that they are following the right requirements but some of them don’t and do all sorts of stuff with the results. Many individuals would say that standardized testing is a helpful way of learning from what the student knows and doesn’t, but the consequences that teachers found out of the standardized tests are making the students have a decrease in critical thinking.

Standardized testing has been around since the mid 1800’s. Even though testing has been around for a long time it is still debated whether or not it should precisely “score” students. Students have been subjected to standardized tests frequently through their years in school due to laws which have been passed by Congress. Decisions about the evaluation of schools and students are recurrently made by government authority and are often not in the best interest of teachers, students, or their classroom environments.

In the society of today, there are various educators who believe in assessment as proper method to measure the performance of a child in school as well as the overall achievement of a specific school system. The assessment may be presented in the form of verbal, written, or multiple choice, and it usually pertains to certain academic subjects in the school curriculum. Recently, many educators began to issue standardized tests to measure the intelligence of a common student body. (Rudner, 1989) These standardized tests were initially created to reveal the success in institutional school programs, and exhibit the abilities of students today. The standardized tests can reveal the strengths and weaknesses

Standardized testing was originally created in China and from there it grew, in 1905 Alfred Binet had developed the IQ test and by the time World War One standardized testing was standard practice (Fletcher). The SAT and ACT are the most common standardized test today, while a lot of college bound students take the ACT and SATs to show how smart they are and how well they will do in college theses test are not the best way to determine a student 's potential, “these test have also been shown that they discriminate against certain groups”.(Wallace) Standardized testing is not a fair way to place someone into college. The ACT and SAT tests have been shown to be race and class biases (Christopherson). Students who come from a low income

The educational system in the United States has gone through many changes over the last century. These changes are a part of a constant movement toward educational excellence for every child in this nation. One of the most recent acts placed on public school systems by the government is to create more accountability for schools in order to ensure that all children are receiving the proper education. Part of this mandate is that public schools will require students to take tests in order to gather information about their academic achievement. Although educators and administrators claim that the mandatory ability testing programs being initiated in America’s public schools will hold students and teachers accountable for academic

Today, it can be observed that society has shifted education drastically from the time schools were constituted, to now. Throughout history, schools have gone from private, where only the elite can attend, to public schools where virtually anyone can attend. One of the factors that goes along with education is standardized testing. Frederick J. Kelly, father of the standardized test, once said, “These tests are too crude to be used, and should be abandoned.” Not only has this shift occurred within education itself, but it has occurred within the testing concepts found within standardized testing so much so that the founder of these tests has chosen to give up on it.

Standardized tests were created during the First World War as a tool to measure the “intellect, ability, and potential” of the soldiers in the army (Turgut 64-65). From World War I to the launch of Sputnik I by the Soviet Union, standardized tests were used to enable development and have aided in progress of a country. Standardized tests have also been introduced into the education system to measure the student’s intelligence in a subject.