The historical purpose of the use of standardized testing in the United States was to reflect two fundamentally American beliefs about the organization and allocation of educational opportunities: fairness and efficiency. Fairness meant that all children were provided the similar opportunities regardless of schools or neighborhoods. Efficiency referred to the orderly provision of educational services to all children. This chapter covers four chronological periods of testing. The first period which was between 1840-1875 consisted of achievement tests by way of formal written testing which replaced oral examinations. The second period was from 1875-1918 focuses on the development and administration of a range of new testing instruments that measured mental abilities. The third period ranged from 1918-1975 focused on the development of new testing models such as test batteries. And, the fourth period from 1945-1969 which focused on equality, fairness, and technological competiveness. Testing of students in the United States is over 150 years old and has played a pivotal role in the American experiment with democratic …show more content…
World War I also had a significant impact on testing strategies in the early twentieth century The U.S. Army required a method for quickly identifying potential officers among large numbers of recruits. To do so, Arthur Otis and Robert Yerkes developed the Alpha Army Test, which gauged a soldier's mental capabilities. The Alpha Army Test, which had an efficient and effective scoring method, became a model for many future standardized tests. This test changed the image of standardized testing, and patent and copyright requests for tests soared. After World War II, student tracking became widely used in schools as standardized tests were used to sort students into different curricula based on abilities. Student tracking using standardized tests became a common practice in the 1920s. The use of standardized tests scores have been used for decades to show aptitude and intelligence but that it was meant to help individual students, not to make generalizations regarding a student’s academic