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Historical Preamble: The Broad Function of Testing
and the Birth of a Specific Testing Industry
Education, broadly construed, serves a basic function in fostering crucial skills and
dispositions in younger generations, thus enabling the continuity and reconstruc-
tion of social structures and cultural traditions (Dewey, 1916; Habermas, 1984).
Comparative psychology suggests that sustained and explicit teaching and learning
are unique to our species. While some other species pass on acquired techniques,
some argue that no other species fundamentally depends on mechanisms of cultural
transmission to foster the maturity of its members (Tomasello, 1999). In a definitive
way, to be human is to be educated. Importantly, educational processes of almost
any type depend upon assessments, or tests.
1
Tests, broadly construed, serve a basic educational function. They are a neces-
sary part of a dialogue between the student, the teacher, and what is being taught. For
as long as
Homo sapiens sapiens
has existed there have always been students and
teachers because there have always been things to be taught. Thus, there have always
been tests. Even before the invention of schooling, informal and formal tests of all
kinds were used for educational purposes, from the passing on of food-procuring
practices and culture-specific skills to apprentice workshops and religious training
(Cremin, 1970). In order for teachers to provide instruction or guidance they must
understand what the student has understood so far. How else can the teacher know
what the student needs to learn next? Testing is one primary way that the inter-
generational interactions constituting cultural transmission become explicitly and
reflectively educative. Thus the use of tests to “measure” student understanding has
a long history. Yet, as discussed below, questions of what is worth measuring have
not figured prominently in modern test design.
After the invention of schooling, formal testing itself became an explicit compo-
nent of educational systems of various sizes and types. As testing became explicit
its uses became more varied. Classically, public debates and oral exams came to
supplement ongoing educative assessments, serving to determine if students had
learned sufficiently to assume the roles in society they were being trained to fill
(e.g., the priesthood). Proficiency in reading and writing became a focus of testing
as some elite segments of the population came to value and require literacy. Thus,
early on, beyond serving as an educative aid, formal testing infrastructures came to
1
Throughout this chapter we use the terms
test
and
assessment
somewhat interchangeably, more
commonly using the former. Both terms are rich with connotations and there are liabilities accom-
panying the use of either. We feel that
testing
better conveys a formalized educational process,
whereas
assessment
is a more general and ambiguous term, which includes research instruments
and various noneducative measurements of capability. We realize that our usage of these terms cuts
against the grain of some aspects of common usage, but we desire to redeem
testing
from its status
as a term of derision.
