Trends That On Hindered

While there are many trends stemming from the 1890s up through the 1930s that have had a positive lasting effect on the American school system, it is important to note those that had a negative impact on our educational system as well. While all teaching trends and policies are created with good intentions, some have left a dark stain on the history of American education. While I.Q. testing is no longer implemented in our school system as a means of classifying students, educational policies such as standardized testing remain and are still widely used through out the United States as a means of measuring student intelligence.

The lingering effects of policies such as this continue to impact the futures and vocations of the American youth.

Standardized testing is dreaded by all teachers, regardless of the subject. Even if a course doesn’t have the stress of teaching to the state regulated test class time is still stolen from the students in favor of measuring them with a system created in the 1800s by a French educator who had no intention of reducing the students taking the test to a mere statistic.

Alfred Binet (1857- 1911) developed standardized testing to help students who were falling behind in their studies. This lead to the later development of I.Q. testing in the United States which was used as a means to classify individuals based on their supposed intelligence levels. It’s important to consider the fact that there were two tests administered, the Alpha test, to the literate, and the Beta test, to the illiterate.

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Since there was a need to develop two tests it stands to reason that there would be differing results based off the test administered.

The predictable variance in the results of these tests allowed racist individuals to further advocate for vocational programs in low income and immigrant schools. Terman (1922), and Yerks were both strong supporters of I.Q. testing and determined from the test results that those of a non-Anglo-Saxon background would indiscriminately have lower intelligence levels than those of European decent. This determination further lead to the Eugenics program and the attempted sterilization of minorities within the United States. When the history of standardized testing is revealed the continued purpose of modern standardized state tests comes into question. It is curious what other claim could be made for the advocation of state testing besides the classification and division of students based of their scores. Today standardized state testing has evolved, like everything else in the American educational system, is currently defined as:

A standardized test is any form of test that  requires all test takers to answer the same questions, or a selection of questions from common bank of questions, in the same way, and that  is scored in a “standard” or consistent manner, which makes it possible to compare the relative performance of individual students or groups of students. While different types of tests and assessments may be “standardized” in this way, the term is primarily associated with large-scale tests administered to large populations of students, such as a multiple-choice test given to all the eighth-grade public-school students in a particular state, for example.

While the measurements of the tests our students take today are not of the same caliber of those in the past, state testing does play a large role in student’s academic futures. State tests can determine what classes a student will take throughout high school and can influence if and what colleges that student is able to apply to and attend. These factors are just as important today as the discriminating results of the past I.Q. tests from which these state tests are derived. State testing is not the only remaining stress from this era regarding the current classroom. David Snedden backed both vocational programs beginning at the alarmingly young age of twelve, as well as public schools shouldering the responsibility of teaching morality to students. This issue remains prevalent to this day.

Due to Snedden’s policies many families expect schools to teach their children right and wrong yet become increasingly upset when the morality that is taught in school fails to align with their own set of beliefs. It also stands to reason that with the separation of church and state it is in now way possible for schools to even begin to teach children right and wrong. This remains the responsibility of the parent and their affiliated place of worship, if a family wishes for their child to be taught morality in a school setting that child should be sent to a private school. Since private schools aren’t run by the public government the separation of church and state no longer applies, and so these schools can teach whatever morality they wish to the attending students. Until such a time that the separation of church and state is repealed it simply isn’t possible for public schools to teach something such as morality to its students.

Though policies such as these have had lasting negative impacts on both students and the public-school system, their influences are still felt in classrooms today. For example, standardized state testing remains, despite all the data showing students do not perform optimally under stress caused by testing. Other studies also show that portfolios would be a more accurate measurement of student growth and progress throughout their educational careers. Despite this state testing is still the choice of the government when it comes to quantifying the intelligence of our students. Teachers also feel the remnants of Snedden’s proposal for public schools to take over the role of teaching every aspect of a student’s life. Any social media site holds innumerable complaints that the school system didn’t adequately prepare them for adulthood. With the pursuit of liberal academic curriculum vocational courses were discarded and the responsibility of teaching life skills fell to the parents. However, many young adults lament their lack of preparation for anything more than college. Thus, it stands to reason that while schools are not equipped to teach morality, they should resume teaching basic life skills despite their vocational inclination.