Standardized Testing and Race: Continuity and Change, 1975–2000

• In Event: From Eugenics to Standardized Testing: Histories of Educational Assessment

Abstract

This paper deals with question of race and inequality associated with testing, generally between 1975 and 2000. It opens with discussion of challenges to the validity of IQ tests, particularly in a 1975 conference report by the NAACP. This prompted important changes in the testing industry, which wrestled with questions about its fairness. Following 1975, criterion-based testing tempered black skepticism somewhat, but also led to conflict and controversy. A later development was discovery of psychological factors affecting minority group performance on such assessments. Finally, publication of the Bell Curve brought racial test disparities back into contention, stimulating research into "achievement gaps" and renewed policy interest in closing them, culminating in NCLB.

Author

• John L. Rury, University of Kansas
  Presenting Author