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As far back as 1792, Professor William Farish at Cambridge University in England scored examinations quantitatively that resulted in ranking students (Madaus&Stufflebeam, 2000). Results from a single test were then used for comparison purposes ranging from individuals to institutions (Madaus&Kellaghan, 1993). Farish’s belief that “a quantitative value could be assigned to human thoughts was a major step toward constructing a mathematical concept of reality” (Postman, 1993, p. 13). Popularity spread and in 1845 Horace Mann used quantitative examinations with their “narrowly focused questions” in Boston with adolescents in a public school even though essay examinations dominated assessment until approximately 1900 (Klassen, 2006, p. 822). Mann also was instrumental in grouping students according to chronological age, leading to the current taken for granted assumption that graded classrooms is the way schools should be structured (Garrison, 2009).

The history of large-scale standardized intelligence testing and achievement testing began at the beginning of the last century. Lewis Terman, from Stanford, developed intelligence tests as well as the first Stanford achievement. Both types of tests were based on his beliefs in deterministic innate intelligence. Both also were anchored in an ideology that students possessed differing capacities to absorb information. History has revealed the connection of standardized achievement testing to the eugenics movement (Garrison, 2009). The eugenics explanation of the achievement gap between Whites and other groups was innate ability. For example, Terman (1916) wrote:

Their dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stocks from which they come. The fact that one meets this type with such extraordinary frequency among Indians, Mexicans, and Negroes [ sic ] suggests quite forcibly the whole question of racial differences in mental traits will have to be taken up anew and by experimental methods. The writer predicts that when this is done there will be discovered enormously significant racial differences in general intelligence, differences which cannot be wiped out by any scheme of mental culture…There is no possibility at present of convincing society that they should not be allowed to reproduce, although from a eugenic point of view they constitute a grave problem because of their unusually prolific breeding. (pp. 91-92)

The use of intelligence tests and the sorting system was advocated for the reorganization of schools (Terman, Dickson, Sutherland, Franzen, Tltper,&Fernald, 1922). This led to such social constructs as new terms regarding differing degrees of student knowledge (Chapman, 1988, p. 181). The ranking of students was tied to intelligence and was based on a five-tiered sorting system: “ very inferior, inferior, average, superior, and very superior” (Terman, 1916, p. 72). Eventually, the following terms were used in grading but continued reflecting the idea of innate intelligence: “failure,” “below average,” “average,” “above average,” and “superior or excellent.” The current definitions of grading in California seem to emerge from this history as well: “far below basic,” “below basic,” “basic,” “proficient,” and “advanced.” Bagley (1925) realized that this type of stratification in schooling met workforce needs where a majority of people were needed for manual and factory-line jobs: “Of late, too, the determinist has discovered that the inescapable differences in native intelligence fit in admirably with our industrial development” (Bagley, p. 23).

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Source:  OpenStax, Educational leadership and administration: teaching and program development, volume 23, 2011. OpenStax CNX. Sep 08, 2011 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11358/1.4
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