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October 30, 2002HOOVER DIGEST 2002 NO. 4 EDUCATION

A Brief History of Testing and Accountabilityby Diane Ravitch

How to improve our public schools? Many policymakers argue that we can start by holdingstudents, teachers, schools, and school districts accountable for student performance. Thisapproach may sound perfectly reasonablebut it has the education profession up in arms. ByHoover fellow Diane Ravitch .

Nowadays, one thinks of testing and accountability as twins ineducation; tests, it is assumed, produce the data on whichaccountability for results are based. A survey of the history of

American education, however, reveals that although testing has

been a staple in American public education since the nineteenthcentury, the idea of accountabilityholding not only students butteachers, schools, even school districts accountable for studentperformanceis a more contemporary invention. A long-standingand fundamental conflict between the education profession andlaypeople as to the purpose and uses of testing may explain whyaccountability does not share testings long pedigree. It may also help to explain much of thecontroversy that surrounds testing and accountability in our schools today.

Nineteenth-century schools tested their students to see if they had mastered what they were

taught, and students who didnt pass the tests were left back. Schoolteachers in the nineteenthcentury were often required to pass a test of their knowledge and could be interviewed by membersof the local school board (which usually included a member of the clergy) to make sure theyharbored no unconventional views or unusual religious beliefs. But once they were accepted for service, teachers faced no more tests of their suitability or capacity. If students failed to learn, itwas the students fault.

High school in those days was generally understood to be for those who could handle the work; atthe end of the nineteenth century, this meant fewer than one of every ten adolescents. The evensmaller number of students who wanted to go to college had to prepare themselves for college-

level work. Although many colleges at the time accepted anyone who applied, the most prestigious,such as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, required students to pass specific admission examinations.In 1900, following complaints from school principals and headmasters about the difficulty of preparing students for different examinations for different colleges, the College EntranceExamination Board was created to prepare a single test for college admission. The CollegeBoards, as they became known, published syllabi in different subjects; teachers taught thesyllabus prepared for their subject, and students were examined on whether they had mastered it.

In the early years of the twentieth century, after the field of educational psychology wasestablished, the design and administration of testing began to change. As a new discipline,

educational psychology found a home in the new colleges of education, and most psychologists of education became engaged in the reform of educational testing.
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The leading educational psychologist in the first half of the twentieth centuryEdward L. Thorndikeof Teachers College, Columbia Universitywas determined to demonstrate that education couldbecome an exact science. But although he applied rigorous scientific methods in order to perfecttests as a measure of academic performance, Thorndike had little interest in using them for purposes of accountability. Like other Progressives of his time, he believed that education was afunction of the state and that its administration should be a professional matter in which publicoversight was strictly limited. His work on testing, therefore, was intended to strengthen theprofession, leaving noneducators with little reason to become involved in the operation of publicschools.

Led by psychologists such as Thorndike, the testing movement evolved as an integral part of theProgressive education movement. Progressivism gained ideological dominance of the profession inthe 1930s and 1940s because of its association with progress, science, and reform, as well as itspopularity among professors of education. Professional educators embraced testing because itseemed to place education on a scientific plane, where decisions could be made on a professionalbasis and could withstand the entreaties of parents. Progressive educators also embraced effortsto make schools less academic and more amenable to children who were not interested intraditional schooling.

As these Progressive ideas took hold, schools were encouraged to promote children each year regardless of their performancea practice that came to be known as social promotion. At onelevel, this was a response to the Depression; it was intended to keep young people in school andout of the job market. But at another level, social promotion was championed by Progressiveeducators who were concerned about the effects of retention and failure on the psychological well-being of the child. These social promotion advocates insisted that schools should put lessemphasis on subject matter, discipline, and grades and more emphasis on childrens socialadjustment.

Thus, although testing was regularly used in the schools, there was no belief within the professionthat tests should be used to hold anyone accountable. The spread of social promotion meant thatstudents would not be held accountable for their performance in school, a complete turnaroundfrom nineteenth-century practices. And this turnaround happened almost entirely without publicparticipation, facilitated instead by the professions belief that the practice of education was strictlya professional matter that need not involve members of the public other than as taxpayers.

PUSHING FOR ACCOUNTABILITY

Interest in accountability may be traced to the landmark 1966 report Equality of Educational Opportunity, known as the Coleman report for its lead author, sociologist James Coleman. Writtenas a study to compare the distribution of resources and opportunities among children of differentraces, the Coleman report also examined differences in achievement scores, or outcomes. Thestudy was significant for many reasons, one of which was its shift in focus from inputs to results,which followed the authors decision to examine how school resources affected achievement.

In the wake of this reportalthough professional educators continued to believe that anyinadequacies in the schools could be resolved with additional resourcespolicymakers, publicofficials, community activists, and parents started to conclude that many of the problems were

structural consequences of the bureaucratic (read: professional) system of public education andcould only be addressed by market competition or structural changes.


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This shift in focus from inputs (resources) to outputs (results) was facilitated by the increasingavailability of test scores. The establishment of the National Assessment of Educational Progress(NAEP) in 1970 provided cumulative new data and trend lines to document the educationalachievement of American students. Another source of information about student achievement wasderived from international tests of mathematics and science, tests in which American eighth andtwelfth graders often performed poorly.

As more and more information accumulated about student performance, elected officials cameunder pressure to do something about low student achievement. Governors, in particular, took upthe challenge. By the early 1980s, education was the single biggest budget item in every state,usually consuming 40 percent of a states expenditures. Some governors wanted to get educationcosts under their control, some wanted to make education spending more cost-effective, and mostwanted to accomplish both. Many of them turned to business leaders as their natural allies in tryingto improve their states complex and labor-intensive educational systems, and many incentivestructures that worked to improve business performance were adapted to public education in aneffort to improve school performance, such as transparency in budget reporting, resources,operations, and results. In short, elected officials were expecting to see accountability for performance.

STALEMATE

This is where we have seen a split occur over the past generation between professional educatorsand the public officials who control the purse strings. In effect, there are two competing paradigmsof education reform at work simultaneously and not always harmoniously. Professional educatorsand their allies in higher education continue to focus on inputs (resources for reducing class size,increasing teachers salaries, and expanding teacher training, for example), whereas policymakersrepresenting the public seek accountability for results.

These two competing paradigms are in constant tension, with first one and then the other gainingbrief advantage. Policymakers have sought accountability for students, teachers, schools, andschool districts. Professional educators have largely resisted these pressures. The grounds for their resistance have varied, depending on the issue, but in every instance the educators havesought to water down accountability and maintain professional discretion. Consider the followingexamples:

Policymakers want tests to have stakes for test takers attached to them so that students will exertgreater effort to pass them. Professional educators (with some notable exceptions) seek to soften

and eliminate any stakes for students. The most notable exception to this generalization was AlbertShanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers until his death in 1996. Shanker advocated standards, testing, and stakes, and his union has mainly followed his line, whereas thelarger teachers unions, the National Education Association, and other education organizationshave maintained their strong objections.

Policymakers have endorsed the standards-and-testing approach, in which states describe whatstudents are expected to learn, then test to see whether they have. Professional educators havegone along with this strategywith varying degrees of enthusiasmbut with a chorus that warnsabout the dangers of teaching to the test or narrowing the curriculum.

Policymakers want to use test results to reward teachers with merit pay. Professional educators


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vigorously reject this as a breach of professionalism that will undermine morale.

Policymakers enacted laws in nearly 40 states to permit the creation of public charter schools.Educators were skeptical and, in some cases, openly objected to what they saw as a diversion of public funds to quasi-public schools.

Policymakers have supported the use of contracting to allow private companies to manage

schools. Educators have seen this move as a threat to public education and, in some cases, haveopenly fought against rewarding contracts to for-profit companies.

Policymakers have pushed for the use of school report cards, so that parents can find out howtheir childrens schools are doing, and for state intervention or takeover for schools thatconsistently fail to perform. Educators continue to insist that the root problem of school failure islack of resources.

It is fair to say that policymakers pressure for accountability has not run into a brick wall of resistance but a bowl of Jell-O instead, where demands for accountability are eventually but

inevitably transformed into demands for more resources. Educators want to improve studentperformance, but to do so they must have higher salaries, smaller class sizes, more training, andso on.

The starkest illustration of this can be found in Massachusetts, which passed an ambitious schoolreform law in 1993 that pledged an extra $1 billion a year for the schools with the understandingthat students would be expected to pass state examinations for high school graduation by 2003.The state put up the money as promised, but by 2000 many educators were in open revolt againstthe state testing program, with the states teachers union even running an expensive advertisingcampaign and sponsoring legislation to roll back implementation of the state graduation tests.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the debate over standards and accountability is that thestates that have persisted in this strategy over time have seen steady improvement in studentperformance. North Carolina, Massachusetts, Texas, and Virginia all saw strong achievementgains for their students, both on state tests and on the regular tests administered by NAEP. Thegains were especially significant for black and Hispanic students, whose performance in all stateslagged far behind their white and Asian peers.

It is also intriguing that all this jousting over the fate of accountability programs took place withanother version of accountability lurking on the sidelines: vouchers. Vouchers are a form of accountability because they offer parents the opportunity to remove their children from aninstitution that does not satisfy theman alarming premise for professionals whose livelihooddepends on the survival of that institution. Vouchers directly challenge the supremacy of the statesystem of public education, so it is hardly surprising that spokespeople for public education wouldvigorously attack them.

In all areas having to do with accountability in our schools, clashes will continue between thepolicymakers who seek it and the educators who seek to deflect it. We can expect to see continueddemands for pumping more resources into education, which to some extent is reasonable: Teacher salaries should be high enough to attract well-educated college graduates into the classroom;school facilities should be ample; school supplies should be adequate to students needs; andteachers should get continuing education to stay abreast of improved methods and knowledge.


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We can also expect to see continued demands for improved performance in our schools. Thepublic will continue to insist that students should be able to read, write, use mathematics, and begenerally well prepared for further education or for technical jobs when they graduate from highschool.

If large numbers of students continue to be poorly prepared, the public is likely to conclude either that a generation of school reform has failed or that the reforms to date have been too timid. If thatshould happen, then interest in accountability through market reformsthat is, vouchersis likelyto have greater public support than it has until now, especially in light of the recent U.S. SupremeCourt decision that upheld the existing school voucher program in Cleveland.

Albert Shanker presciently recognized that the failure of standards-based reforms might pave theway for market-based reforms. His premature death, however, canceled out the one prominentvoice among professional educators who was ready to lead a campaign in support of a strategy of standards, testing, and accountability.

American education, in the near term at least, will therefore continue to be driven by the two

paradigms: the professional education paradigm, which deeply believes that the profession shouldbe insulated from public pressure for accountability and which is deeply suspicious of theintervention of policymakers, and the policymaker paradigm, which insists that the public schoolsystem be subject to incentives and sanctions based on its performance. How this conflict isresolved will determine the future of American education.

Diane Ravitch, a historian of education, was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and was oneof the charter members of Hoover's Koret Task Force on K12 Education (19992008). She is alsoa research professor of education at New York University and a senior fellow at the Brookings

Institution. Ravitch was assistant secretary of education responsible for the Office of EducationalResearch and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education from 1991 to 1993. Among her many books are The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn(2003); Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform (2000); and The Troubled Crusade:

American Education, 19451980 (1983). A native of Houston, she is a graduate of the Houstonpublic schools. She received a B.A. from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in history from ColumbiaUniversity's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Adapted from the essay Testing and Accountability, Historically Considered in the Hoover Pressbook School Accountability , edited by Williamson M. Evers and Herbert J. Walberg.

School Accountability is available from the Hoover Press . Also available is Teacher Quality , edited by Lance T. Izumi and Williamson M. Evers. To order, call 800-935-2882.

Copyright 2013 by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior UniversityPhone: 650-723-1754

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A Brief History of Testing and Accountability | Hoover Institution