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Standardized tests were used when people first entered the US to test social roles and find social power and status. The College Entrance Examination Board did not offer standardized testing for university and college admission until 1900. Their first examinations were administered in 1901, in nine subjects.
Those tests were first administered in the spring of 2007 to students in grades two through four, and beginning in 2009, the STS was available for students in grades two through eleven.
Founded as the Scholastic Aptitude Test by the College Board, a nonprofit group of universities and other educational organizations, the original test lasted 90 minutes and consisted of 315 questions testing knowledge of vocabulary and basic math.
Standardized tests are used to evaluate the effectiveness of an education program. Besides being useful in assessing student performance, they are also a means to evaluate the curriculum. Principals and teachers can see where their students are doing well, and determine what areas need improvement.
The earliest record of standardized testing comes from China, where hopefuls for government jobs had to fill out examinations testing their knowledge of Confucian philosophy and poetry.
In 1999, California passed the Public Schools Accountability Act (PSAA) as the first step in developing a comprehensive system to hold students, schools, and districts accountable for improving student performance. The program now includes a student testing system (STAR) and a high school exit exam (CAHSEE).
If we were to be guided by historical sources, the tests were invented sometime in the late 19th century by an American businessman and philanthropist named Henry Fischel. However, some sources attribute the invention of standardized tests to another man of the same name, namely Henry Fischel.
1901 | First College Boards |
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1959 | First ACT |
1978 | First Released SAT |
1989 | Major ACT changes |
1994 | Major SAT Changes |
The reason for this was that Kelly designed the test to be analyzable with regard not just to individual achievement, as an assessment tool that would help a teacher and a parent determine how the child was doing, but also as a tool that would allow results to be compared from one grade to another within a school, …
There are no mandated standardized tests in Finland, apart from one exam at the end of students’ senior year in high school. There are no rankings, no comparisons or competition between students, schools or regions. Finland’s schools are publicly funded.
Opponents argue that standardized tests only determine which students are good at taking tests, offer no meaningful measure of progress, and have not improved student performance, and that the tests are racist, classist, and sexist, with scores that are not predictors of future success.
March 5, 2014, at 3:30 p.m. The College Board announced Wednesday across-the-board changes to the SAT college admissions test – including a return to the 1600-point scoring scale and a departure from the mandatory timed essay – as well as new initiatives to promote equity and opportunity for college-bound students.
The original SAT from 1926 featured 315 questions with a time limit of 97 minutes, and the verbal and mathematics sections of the test had not yet been split up into discrete sections. … Takers can score up to 1600 points on the overall test, with a total of 800 potential points per section.
The last major changes to the SAT came in 2005, when it altered some question formats, added a written essay and changed its score scale from 1600 to 2400.
The man who invented standardized testing, Frederick J. Kelly, said “These tests are too crude to be used, and should be abandoned.”
The STAR program ended on July 1, 2013 and was replaced by the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) System.
CTB was established in 1926 in Los Angeles by Ethel Clark. Clark’s husband Willis had developed the Los Angeles Diagnostic Tests in the Fundamentals of Arithmetic, which she bought the rights to sell. She sent out 25 cent postcards advertising the availability of the test to various districts around the country.
California Achievement Test (CAT)
The California Achievement Test is very popular among Christian schools and homeschools because it takes a bit less time to administer, and contains more traditional values. There are not as many tests included in the CAT, so it can be completed in less time for students to complete.
The TAAS, or Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, was the third standardized test used in Texas between 1991 and 2002, when it was replaced by the TAKS test from 2003 to 2013. It was used from grades 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11.
Texas used the TAKS test from 2003 through 2011. The state moved to the STAAR test at the 2011-2012 school year. Students who had not passed TAKS were able to retest until the beginning of the 2017-18 school year.
The multiple choice question made its debut in 1914, the creation of Frederick J. Kelly in his doctoral dissertation “Teachers’ Marks, Their Variability and Standardization”.
That’s about 9% of California’s total student enrollment, but state tests are only required for California students in grades three to eight and 11. California’s education officials have left it to local districts to decide whether to administer the Smarter Balanced tests.
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 required some standardized testing in public schools.