The Pros And Cons Of Standardized Testing

Despite its subtle use in the late 1800s, standardized testing as the procedure that we know of today had its origins in the United States predominantly in the mid-20th century. A major cause of this historic phenomenon can be related to national population. Prior to the events of World War II in the 1940’s, the United States’ population was steadily increasing each year. After the war had ceased and the population decline caused by the war subsided, the population of the United States once again began to escalate; this time, however, the population grew at a significantly higher rate. This increased number of young students joined with returning war veterans seeking further education in order to create an unprecedented number of new workers and students. The United States then encountered a newfound necessity: the ability to assess the subject knowledge or aptitude of an extremely large group of people in a quick and accurate manner. To solve this problem, American organizations turned to standardized testing. It was here in the 1940’s and 1950’s that standardized tests began their widespread use in determining the outcomes of numerous American examinees each year.

As early as the 1940s, it was known that some standardized tests were being administered in order to discriminate against the education of certain groups of people, such as when a standardized test was implemented by Ivy League universities in order to exclude Jewish students from attending in favor of a more Protestant student body (Jacobs; Rooks). This event is generally seen as the historical source for the argument against the use of standardized testing due to the clear issues that were presented by the misuse of a standardized