4.4) Psychological Testing Movement

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American Education Reform: History, Policy, Practice

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University of Pennsylvania

American Education Reform: History, Policy, Practice

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Discover what shapes how we talk about schools today by exploring the history of U.S. education reform. Engage with the main actors, key decisions, and major turning points in this history. See how social forces drive reform. Learn about how the critical tensions embedded in U.S. education policy and practice apply to schools nationally, globally— and where you live.

De la lección

The Progressive Era

This module looks at the Progressive movement writ large; the U.S. settlement movement as a source of urban school reform; the changes “administrative progressives” effected in the governance of urban school districts; the influence of the U.S. Army’s World War I intelligence- testing program on the American school system; social efficiency schooling and its theoretical foundations; the Committee of Ten, 1892–93; the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 1918; and Booker T.Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.

4.1) Introduction3:58

4.2) Progressive Seedbeds of Education Reform4:31

4.3) Rise of the Administrative Progressives in American School Reform 6:22

4.4) Psychological Testing Movement7:17

4.5) Social Efficiency Schooling 6:15

4.6) The Committee of Ten5:07

4.7) The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education7:00

4.8) The Southern Education Movement 7:59

4.9) Rosenwald Schools and County Training Schools for African Americans6:40

Conoce a los instructores

Dr. John L. Puckett
Professor of Education
Graduate School of Education
Dr. Michael Charles Johanek
Senior Fellow
Graduate School of Education

The turning point in the emerging field of educational psychology was

Stanford education professor Lewis Terman's work on intelligence testing.

Terman had studied statistics with E L Thorndike at Teachers' College.

On his deathbed,Terman would say that Thorndike had

been one of the two most important influences in his career.

Terman's dramatic breakthrough in educational psychology was his

re-design of the Frenchman, Alfred Binet's intelligence scale.

Who's original purpose was diagnostic.

Binet's instrument was designed to identify abnormalities in children so

that they could be treated.

Significantly, Binet, unlike Terman,

believed that intelligence was malleable, that is trainable.

Measured abnormalities could be remediated.

In 1916, however, Terman turned the Binet Clinical Scale on its ear.

Stripping it of its benign assumptions and reducing its meaning to a single number.

With this new instrument,

Terman introduced the idea of the intelligence quotient, the infamous IQ.

Which he claimed was hereditary and fixed.

The child's IQ which was numerically expressed as the ratio of

the child's measured mental age to her chronological age was destiny.

Not only unchangeable, but also predictive.

The Harvard scientist Stephen J Gould describes Terman's importance as

follows, quote.

Terman's major influence did not reside in his sharpening or

extension of the Binet scale.

Binet's tasks had to be administered by a trained tester working with one

child at a time.

It could not be used as instruments for general ranking.

But Terman wished to test everybody.

For he hoped to establish a gradation of innate ability that could

sort all children into their proper station in life.

>> Stanford-Binet was a test for individuals.

On the eve of World War I,

Terman's graduate student Arthur Otis designed a written test to measure IQ.

One that was strongly correlated with Stanford-Binet and

could be administered to groups of test takers.

After World War I, written intelligence and standardized achievement tests.

All strongly correlated with Stanford-Binet would proliferate in

the nation's schools.

We'll get to that in a moment.

Terman's hereditary in theory of IQ was pernicious for three reasons.

First, it was never clear exactly what Terman and

those who followed him were actually measuring.

After all intelligence is not a trait like height or

weight that can be measured directly.

At best, it's an indirect measure of what it purports to measure.

Second, Terman claimed spuriously, and power people believed him.

That IQ accurately predicted the range of jobs or

careers an individual was suited for.

For example, anyone scoring below the mean of 100 on Stanford-Binet and

it's offspring written test was dismissed.

As lacking the intelligence to pursue a profession.

As we've noted, Terman wanted to rank the entire U.S.

population and match education and employment to IQ.

Third, Terman was insensitive to the effects of environment on intelligence,

an insensitivity that would be strongly criticized in the 1930s.

And he made prejudicial assumptions about particular social classes and races.

For example, on the basis of having tested individuals,

he imputed low intelligence to groups.

Blacks, Mexicans, Native Americans, southern Europeans.

The U.S.

Army adapted the principle of group intelligence testing that Terman inspired.

As a means to test recruits during the nation's mobilization for World War I.

Robert Yerkes, a Harvard psychologist in conjunction with Terman and

other leading psychonutritions.

Oversaw the mental testing of 1.7 million recruits.

Following Terman's logic,

recruits were assigned to various ranks according to their IQ scores.

Two versions of the test were administered.

Army Alpha, a written examination given to literate recruits.

And Army Beta, a pictorial test given to illiterates, non-English speakers, and

men who failed Army Alpha.

The Army's primary interest in the tests was to identify potential officers.

While Yerkes team didn't have much impact on the outcome of World War I,

it ushered in an era of mass testing in American society.

And it opened the door for eugenicists to claim scientific warrants for their view.

That the nation was being doomed by to use Stephen Jay Gould's

sardonic phrasing quote.

The unconstrained breeding of the poor and feeble-minded.

The spread of Negro blood through misgen, miscegenation.

And the swamping of an intelligent native stock by the immigrating dregs of

southern and eastern Europe, unquote.

Exhibit A for their claim was the Army tester's finding that

the average mental age of white American adults was 13.

Just one notch above moron, in the tester's scale.

Eugenicists would cite, the moron scores from immigrants from southern and

eastern Europe, and at the very bottom of the scale, blacks,.

As prima facie evidence for stifling the birth rate of these groups.

Our time here is too short to describe the culturally biased test items and

other measurement flaws in the Army test.

There were many.

And we'll refer you to, to Gould's superb book,

the Mismeasure of Man for a tour de force critique of these tests.

Army Alpha as Gould notes quote was the granddaddy,

literally as well as figuratively, of all mental tests.

Naturally, it correlated strongly with Lewis Terman's Stanford-Binet IQ Test.

In the 1920s, Terman stood in the vanguard in a movement.

That swapped the public schools with group intelligence and

standardized achievement tests.

In addition to Stanford-Binet, Terman created the national intelligence test for

grades 3 through 8.

The Terman group test for grades 7 through 12.

And the Stanford achievement test for a variety of school subjects and

different grade levels.

Terman's tests and

a host of other instruments that proliferated in the 1920s.

Were used by administrators to classify and track the nations school children.

In our next episode, we take up what one historian aptly calls the Cult of

Efficiency in educational administration in the 1910s and 1920s.

We look at how administrative progressive began to reshape public education.

According to what by their likes were scientific and Democratic principles.

They were advocates of social efficiency.

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