SPECIAL FEATURE ON TESTING What's Wrong with Standardized Testing? -n the social sciences, economics is known as the dismal science. In edu cation the “dismal science” has to be standardized testing, «Its history is ominous. + Much test content is unimportant or irrelevant ‘# The structure and formats of the tests are confusing and misleading. + The process of administering the tests is demeaning, wasteful of time, ‘and counterproductive. ‘© The application of statistics that result from test scores distorts reality « It is difficult, if not impossible, to ensure that test results will be used to improve student learning or to help teachers improve instruction, “The paragraphs that follow develop each of these points. ‘The Dismal Science of Education Has a Dismal History Intelligence and achievement testing began in the United States about the turn of the century and is closely associated with developments in France. The story is well known of how the French minister of public instruction ‘commissioned Alfred Binet to construct a test to identify students whose aptitudes were 50 low that they should be placed in special schools, Binet soon found himself opposing those philosophers who supported the idea that intelligence is a fixed quantity. He said, “We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism,” (TThis remark of Binet’s and the Terman and God. dard data cited below are reported in Leon Kamin’s article, “The Politics of JQ," National Elementary Principal, March-April 1975.) But the Americans who were influential in bringing the Binet test to America, Lewis Terman of Stanford University and Henry Goddard of the Vineland Training Schoo! in New Jersey, espoused the “brutal pessimism.” ‘Terman’s translation became the widely used Stanford-Binet 1Q Test. ‘The US. Public Health Service commissioned Goddard to administer the Binet test to immigrants at the receiving station on Elis Island. The test re- sults “showed” that 87 percent of Russians, 83 percent of Jews, 80 percent ‘of Hungarians, and 79 percent of Italians were feebleminded, Consequently, anes, 1977 root's tavexnion