Re: The choice of standardized tests as an historical question

[aburke5054@aol.com]

See the background in Testing in American Schools - from USDOE, early 
90's.  Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Dorn, Sherman <SDorn@tempest.coedu.usf.edu>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 07:16:31 -0400
Subject: [arn-l] The choice of standardized tests as an historical 
question

  Last night, I was thinking about the moment in the early- to 
mid-1970s when
state legislatures began experimenting with some form of accountability 
(as they
then termed it, perhaps borrowing from Leon Lessinger, an associate 
commissioner
of education in the Nixon administration). For example, Florida passed 
something
called an accountability act in 1971, Governor Rubin Askew talked about 
it in
speeches in his first term, and the legislature tried different things 
over the
next several years, including requiring more detailed reporting of 
spending
(from the fiscal metaphor of <em>accountability</em>) and choosing 
standardized
testing as the main measure of academic achievement.

I don't think anyone has adequately explained that choice. In the 
1970s,
standardized testing was coming under fairly harsh criticism for both 
its
construction (claims that they were generally biased in content) and 
use
(especially the group administration of IQ tests frequently used as 
screening
devices for special education). It was in the 1970s that Congress 
changed the
requirements for special-education assessment. From the general 
criticism, I
sometimes wonder if one of the motivations for ETS's famous 1975-76
"blue-ribbon" panel analyzing the SAT decline was a subtle way of 
relegitimizing
the SATs. (No, I don't have time to look into ETS's archives for that.) 
So why
did legislatures such as Florida's choose standardized testing? Last 
night, my
wife gave the usual answers (it's cheaper and easier to number-crunch 
with
them), but that doesn't quite satisfy me as an historian, in part 
because those
are ahistorical claims and in part because I'm not sure where I'd find 
evidence
to confirm those hypotheses. (It's quite possible that legislatures 
enacted
these without any record of discussion.)

Any other possible answers?

Sherman Dorn
University of South Florida
http://www.shermandorn.com


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