Friday, October 18, 2013 - 1:30pm
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “Concord Hymn” commemorated “theshot heard ‘round the world" in the clash between local militiamen andBritish troops that marked the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775.
But 70 years later, in nearby Boston,another shot was fired—figurativelyspeaking this time—thatlaunched the war over standardizedtesting that continues todaynot only in the United States, butacross the globe.
The man considered to be theFather of Standardized Testingin the U.S. is Horace Mann, whowas secretary of the MassachusettsState Board of Educationfrom 1837-48. Before 1845, oralexaminations prevailed as the primaryway to measure educationalattainment in American schools.
But Mann, after visiting schoolsin Europe in 1843, returnedconvinced that written exams weresuperior.He wrote:“When the oral method isadopted, none but those personallypresent at the examination canhave any accurate or valuable ideaof appearance of the school…Notso, however, when the examinationis by printed questions andwritten answers. A transcript, asort of Daguerreotype likeness, asit were, of the state and conditionof the pupils’ minds, is taken andcarried away, for general inspection.
Instead of being confined tocommittees and visitors, it is opento all; instead of perishing with thefleeting breath that gave it life, itremains a permanent record. Allwho are, or who may afterwardsbecome interested in it, may see it.”
In 1845, Mann had membersof his Board of Education prepareand administer written exams tostudents in the Boston schoolsthat the local schoolmasters hadnot seen. The examiners then usedthe test results to harshly criticizethe teachers and the quality ofeducation students were receiving.Teachers countered that the writtenquestions had little to do withwhat students had been taught.In the resulting bitter clash,some teachers were fired andschool board members were sentpacking.
As historian William J. Reese,author of Testing Wars in the PublicSchools: A Forgotten History, wrotein a New York Times essay: “Whattranspired then still sounds eerilyfamiliar: cheating scandals, poorperformance by minority groups,the narrowing of curriculum, thepublic shaming of teachers, theappeal of more sophisticated measuresof assessment, the superiorscores in other nations, all amountingto a constant drumbeat aboutschool failure.”
Eerily familiar, indeed.
