Toward National Assessment

The U.S. Office of Education is formed "for the purpose of collecting such statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress of education in the several States . . . and of diffusing such information."

-- Act of Congress, March 2, 1867. Despite that century-old charge, the Federal Government has never diffused, much less collected, any meaningful facts on the quality of education put forth by U.S. schools. Against strong opposition from local school officials, who remain fearful that federal testing means "federal control," the Carnegie Corporation, with Ford Foundation and Government backing, has now embarked on a national assessment of school performance.

The assessment program was unveiled by former Education Commissioner Francis Keppel at the 1965 White House Conference on Education. He argued that "the nation's taxpayers and their representatives in Congress have every right to know whether their investment in education is paying off." In agreeing to finance pilot tests, Carnegie said that "a nation that has hitched its destiny to the star of education and pours billions of dollars into the enterprise is collectively crazy if it does not try to find out the result of all this effort. We don't know whether most ninth-graders can read and comprehend a typical newspaper paragraph, whether most high school graduates know more or less about more or fewer things than high school graduates did 20 years ago."

No Invidious Comparisons. To frame the tests, Carnegie set up an exploratory committee of educators and executives, headed by Ralph W. Tyler, director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto, Calif. The committee decided to examine 256 population groups, broken down into four age levels (9, 13, 17 and adult); four geographic areas; two income levels; sex; and urban, suburban and rural divisions. This would be done by sampling techniques in which only 5% of an age group would be tested and no single student would be likely to encounter more than a single half-hour test and then only on a few of the ten subjects under study.*

Results of the tests would not be pinpointed by school districts or by states; thus no single teacher would have any feedback on the performance of the one or two pupils from her class likely to be tested. This, Carnegie contends, means that no "invidious comparisons" would result, and no teacher would be under pressure to "teach for the tests." But the broad-brush group results could provide some facts which might help resolve the endless arguments on how well, or poorly, the schools are doing.

This month three school districts co operated in trying out the first pilot tests on 700 fourth-graders. The students were asked to read a clock, show the meaning of numbers by using colored rods or an abacus, pick similar pictures from a group of four. Later this year, up to 50,000 children and adults will be sampled. High school seniors may be asked to fill out a driver's license application, while adults may be quizzed about their reading habits and asked to demonstrate skills with simple tools.

The Tyler committee will study the results of the pilot tests, hopes to make its final report to the Carnegie Corporation by year's end. Tyler is confident that the committee will find national assessment feasible. It may recommend that an independent national commission, rather than the Office of Education, undertake a permanent testing program, most likely with federal funds. Coercive & Comparative. Both HEW Secretary John Gardner, who was head of the Carnegie Corporation when testing was first proposed, and Education Commissioner Harold Howe favor the program. So does the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which recently implied its support by deploring the fact that "there is little information to measure the quality of the public-school output--the student or graduate."

But professional educators are bitterly opposed. One such enemy is the executive committee of The American Association of School Administrators, representing 16,500 public-school superintendents. The committee has asked association members not to cooperate with the testing on the ground that assessment "will be coercive, will inevitably lead to the pressure of regional, state and local comparisons, and will have national overtones in the dispensing of federal aid." The committee claims that its stand has been informally endorsed by leaders of five other major education groups, including the National Congress of Parents and Teachers and the National Education Association.

Secretary Gardner answers that national testing is more likely to help local taxpayers use their schools more effectively than to give the Federal Government more influence. Opponents of assessment, insists Columbia Teachers College President John Fischer, are "suggesting that the more we know, the worse we might behave." Fischer proposes that the exact opposite is closer to the truth.

* The ten: reading, writing, science, mathematics, social studies, citizenship, literature, art, music, vocational education.

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