Improving Schools by Standardized Tests (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Improving Schools by Standardized Tests

Among the more recent ideas there are some that seem pregnant with tremendous possibilities for the improve ment of educational procedure. The most far-reaching in its beneficial possibilities seems to me to be the idea Of measuring the results of teaching and the intelligence of school children by means Of standardized tests. Of large importance also are: The Socialized Recitation, Supervised Study, Teaching Children how to Study, The project-problem Method in Teaching, and the change Of emphasis from oral to silent reading. All these things are rich with promise of greater efficiency in education. But although all the above-mentioned ideas have proved successful, when carried out by trained men and women full Of enthusiasm and thoroughly under standing the psychological principles upon which the ideas were based, nevertheless, when the carrying-out of these same ideas has been attempted by persons lacking in sympathy and full understanding of the principles, aims, and methods involved, they have Often been far from successful.

Superintendents and teachers who condemn these ideas, after proving to their own satisfaction that they are worth less, remind me Of the first farmer in the town Of my boy hood to purchase a mowing machine. For a great many years this man had mowed his many rough and rather rocky acres by hand with the help Of a large crew Of hired men. But one spring the mowing-machine agent appeared in our town and as a result, by the time hay was ready to be cut, the farmer found himself possessed Of a brand-new mowing machine, resplendent in green, yellow, and red. The next morning he started out to mow the back field. Truly his trials that day were many. And when the machine, unable to stand any more Of his inexpert han dling, broke down late in the afternoon, he had succeeded in getting over only about as much ground as one good man with scythe and snath could have mowed in the same length of time. And what an untidy-looking job it was! The next day the farmer started his Old crew to mowing by hand. N 0 more Of that mowing machine for him. He could do more and better work in a day alone than could a man with a pair Of horses and a mowing machine. The mowing machine was a failure. He knew because he had tried it. But did this farmer's experience with his new mowing machine prove the failure Of the machine or the failure Of the man? The mowing machine, we know, will do good and rapid work in astonishingly rough and rocky ground when guided by a practiced hand.

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