History of Standardized Testing and Assessment

The impetus for the standardized testing of public school students in the United States emerged in the 1800s and has continued, with the first documented achievement tests administered in the period from 1840 to 1875, when American educators changed their focus from educating elites to educating the masses (Haladyna, Haas, & Allison, 1998). The earliest tests were intended for individual evaluation, but test results were in fact used to inappropriately compare schools and children without any consideration for non-school influences. With a massive wave of immigration in the nineteenth century, these standardized tests were seen as instruments that could help to ensure that all children were receiving an approximately equal education. Test results were often used to underscore the need for school reform (Haladyna, et al, 1998).

The so-called "standards movement" seeks, in essence, to identify what students should know and be able to do (Deubel, 2002). As Haladyna, et al (1998), have noted, the earlier forms of tests used at the turn of the century were ability or intelligence tests (such as the Binet Intelligence Test). Such tests could be used to weed out children seen as unlikely to succeed academically. They also became a source of discrimination that negatively impacted upon many ethnic groups new to the United States (Haladyna, et al, 1998). Despite criticism from jour

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f each participant. References Bankston, C.L., & Caldas, S.J. (2000). White enrollment in nonpublic schools, public school racial composition, and student performance. The Sociological Quarterly, 41(4), 539-550. Brimelow, P. (2000). Private school surge. Forbes, November 27, 104. Deubel, P. (2002). Selecting curriculum-based software: Valuable educational software can help students rise to the challenge of standardized testing and assessment. Learning and Leading With Technology, 29 (5), 10-17. Gamoran, A. (1996). Do magnet schools boost achievement? Educational Leadership, 54(2), 42-47. Gluckman, A. (2002). Testingà testingà one, two, three: The commercial side of the standardized-testing boom. Dollars and Sense, January, 32-38. Haas, N., & Allison, J. (1998). Continuing tensions in standardized testing. Childhood Education, 74(5), 262-274. Haladyna, T., Haas, N., & Allison, J. (1998). Childhood Education, 74 (5), 262-274. Lewis, A.C. (1997). Of goals and tests. Phi Delta Kappan, 78 (9), 67-79. Lewis, A.C. (1999). Standards and testing. Phi Delta Kappan, 81 (3), 179. Rouse, C.E. (1998). Schools and student achievement: Evidence from the Milwaukee parental choice progra
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