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Sarah Chang
Sarah Summers
ENGL 137H
25 October 2012
Popping the Testing Bubbles: The Real Answers to Human Intellect and Success
Meet Student A. He is a pleasant, young junior in high school, and at this very moment, quite
a nervous one. We are lucky to observe him in the process of discovering his entire fate with just
a push of a mouse. Click! And out pops a four digit number, the digits that piece together a score,
which determines how intelligent he really is. The site of College Board’s website is stained on
his eyeballs as he begins to visualize how the rest of his life will play out, simply based on that
number. Well, good luck, Student A. We hope you scored yourself a good, successful life.
Student A’s situation is a slightly exaggerated one, and yet, this type of dramatic sentiment
surrounds the standardized testing jungle through which most high schoolers must fight their
way. They are required to crawl through copious amounts of practice exams, climb trees of
progress, and after an attempt to escape, might have to duck under the branches of
disappointment. Some get it lucky; a simple stroll and they escape, unscratched, left with the
satisfaction of a worthy score, a score that measures human intelligence and leads them to a life
of high achievement. Look at the power a simple number has. But, this power is waning. As
standardized testing has gained attention around the United States, so has its criticism. The mania
surrounding standardized testing in America’s education system as a means of demonstrating
intelligence has been dented by the growing realization of one gaping flaw: its inability to
accurately measure a student’s intellect. I argue that the awareness of this weakness is due to a
developing shift in what society dubs intelligent, a shift from the stereotypical book-smart nerd
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to a student whose character traits, like persistence, ambition, and self-control, qualities that are
incapable of being shown through any test score, speak more loudly.
This era of testing-obsession finds its roots with the creation of the intelligence quotient test,
or the IQ test, the ultimate and quintessential measurement of intellect. In 1904, the French
psychologist Alfred Binet and physician Theodore Simon, when given the responsibility by the
French government to identify students who were mentally handicapped, developed the first IQ
test, labeled the Binet-Simon test, in order to differentiate between those students, and students
who did not require an alternative form of education (“Human Intelligence: Alfred Binet”). Then
in 1916, from France, the test voyaged overseas to the United States where Lewis Madison
Terman, a Stanford professor, tinkered with the Binet-Simon test. This newly revised test added
German psychologist William Stern’s concept of mental age, compared that number to the
individual’s chronological age and multiplied this ratio by one hundred to churn out the number
that is the “unitary measure of intelligence”, our IQ (“Human Intelligence: Lewis Madison
Terman”). This test quickly surged through America as it gathered immense popularity when
Robert Yerkes, Harvard professor, presented this test to the US Army during World War I.
Yerkes used it, just as Binet and Simon did, to categorize its takers. In this case, Yerkes
administered the test to select which soldiers were given higher positions and separated them
from the low-scoring soldiers, who did not satisfy the military testing requirement and were then
rejected.
From rejection from the military came rejection into colleges as the test trickled down to
American schools. This is where we welcome the famous SAT. Carl Brigham, a colleague of
Yerkes who participated in the inception of the Army IQ tests, transformed this test to one that
was placed on a magnified scale for students in schools. Thus, in 1926, the SAT was born.
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Brigham planted the SAT seed in the American secondary education system with roots extending
back to the IQ test, the ultimate test of intelligence (“History of the SAT: A Timeline”). Today,
its roots still stand strong with its growth thriving; from this SAT seed grew all other
standardized testing: the AP exams, the GRE, the PSAT, the MCAT, the LSAT, the “whatever
three-or-four-letter acronym-AT”. The list stretched on and continues to stretch as we water this
giant botanical creature that is standardized testing. We have accelerated into a stage of test
obsession where the presence of standardized testing in public education has blown up and
exploded, starting as young as in our elementary schools and continuing past our high school
careers.
We have reached a point where we almost always associate standardized testing with public
education due in part to the alarmingly fast expansion of the amount of tests given to students.
According to Peter Henry in his article “The Case Against Standardized Testing” in the
Minnesota English Journal, “In little more than a decade, the frequency and number of
standardized tests has doubled and redoubled…In 2005, 11 million exams were added in
elementary and middle schools; another 11 million tests for high school [students] are expected
to bring the national total to near 50 million by 2008” (Henry 40). The extreme proliferation of
exams demonstrates how much our focus on standardized testing has increased , and it only adds
to our concentrated focus and the weight we put on them to measure a student’s academic
progress and success. As Stephanie Simon puts it in her article “Parents Protest Surge in
Standardized Testing”, “In a growing number of states, scores on standardized tests weigh
heavily in determining whether an 8-year-old advances to the next grade with her classmates;
whether a teen can get his high school diploma; which teachers keep their jobs; how much those
teachers are paid; and even which public schools are shut down or turned over to private
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management” (Simon n.p.). The importance of the relationship between standardized testing
scores and success in one’s career is rapidly swelling. Because our scores “weigh heavily in
determining” the fate of our future, what track we’re put in during grade school, which then
affects what college we get accepted into, which then can even affect our opportunities for jobs
and future salary, standardized testing is nothing short of a big deal for students. The fact that the
American education system has increased the amount of testing reveals the belief that it is a
significant method of measuring the academic state of its students, and it instills this belief in
them. Therefore, these scores tell these test takers whether they are intelligent or not, and now,
they tell students whether they are smart enough to succeed in life. And so students carry this
idea throughout their years in school that if the score’s not high, neither is their intelligence. No
wonder there is such a focus and frenzy buzzing around a simple test score today.
Yet, despite the flourish of standardized testing, it’s finally beginning to wilt. These
standardized tests haven’t always been looked well upon; it’s taken its fair amount of hits, but it
has managed to recover from the wounds. Until recently. According to Kenneth Jost, an adjunct
professor of the Georgetown University Law Center, a new, stronger wave of criticism has
flooded the stability of the standardized test, a hit that it will likely never fully recover from (Jost
n.p. ). In 2001, Richard Atkinson, the president of the University of California presented a
speech that began the forefront of the fight against the preoccupation with standardized testing
when he made a drastic proposal: “I recommended that we no longer require the SAT I for
students applying to UC” because “America’s overemphasis on the SAT is compromising our
educational system” (Atkinson n.p.). He continues his speech by explaining how unexpected the
proposal is when he exclaims that “this recommendation has significant implications for the
University of California since we are one of the principal users of the SAT” (Atkinson n.p.). The
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University of California was one of the first schools to accept the SAT into the college
admissions process, and yet, it has turned its back on it by no longer requiring its applicants to
provide those digits of their score that mean so much in America’s education system.
Standardized testing takes a hit. In fact, it’s taking many hits. According to the National Center
for Fair and Open Testing, a total of 730 four-year colleges dropped the SAT I or ACT as a
requirement for admissions in 2006. That number increased to 775 in 2010, and now in 2012, a
whopping total of 850 four-year colleges do not use those tests to admit students into their
bachelor degree programs, an increase of seventy-five schools in just two years (FairTest). With
this many universities taking the spotlight off of standardized testing, and with the large increase
of schools that have pushed it aside, it can’t be the star of our education system any longer.
We’re noticing a visible shift away from this fixation on standardized testing scores and what
they mean about the student’s academic abilities and future to the student itself, front stage and
center; the spotlight is now all on Student A, not the number that pops up on that screen.
Now, our focus has shifted towards the character of the student, the qualitative aspects rather
than the quantitative, and I think this shift is happening because America’s educators are
realizing that being intelligent and being highly successful in life, having a stable career with a
sufficient salary, shouldn’t be based on a test score. We are changing our definition of intelligent.
While addressing the flaws in standardized testing, specifically the SAT I, Atkinson
demonstrates where educators and admissions officers should be focusing their attention: “I
recommended that all campuses move away from admission processes that use narrowly defined
quantitative formulas and instead adopt procedures that look at applicants in a comprehensive,
holistic way” (Atkinson n.p.). This holistic way of approaching a student’s abilities suggests that
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we are moving away from the chaos of scores and instead moving towards who the student really
is.
This shift isn’t just occurring in the state of California; it’s spread to the east coast as well.
Dominic Randolph, the headmaster for one of New York City’s most prestigious private schools,
Riverdale Country School, a school that requires its candidates to take a standardized test as a
part of the admissions process , agrees that “this push on tests…is missing out on some serious
parts of what it means to be a successful human. The most critical missing piece…is character”
(Tough n.p.). He argues that those students who hover and hone in all their focus on
standardized testing are ultimately set up for failure; when they are faced with a difficult task that
isn’t tested on the exam, they are, as he puts it “screwed”: “When that person suddenly has to
face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve
grown the capacities to be able to handle that” (Tough n.p.). Being successful isn’t about being
able to do well on a test, but instead being able to adapt and “face up to a difficult moment”; it’s
not about spitting out memorized facts or a list of advanced vocabulary, but being able to handle
a situation that was never gone over in a practice exam or in a school’s curriculum. A student
who has good character traits, not necessarily an amazingly flawless, clean and crisp test score,
can accomplish these tasks that aren’t so easy. These students are competent as well. The effect
of character on success can be seen in students who are a part of the Knowledge is Power
Program, or KIPP, a program that supports under-privileged students by providing them access
to a better education. David Levin, the co-founder of the KIPP charter schools, observed that the
students who did well weren’t necessarily the ones that strived in academics: “As Levin watched
the progress of those KIPP alumni, he noticed something curious: the students who
persisted in college were not necessarily the ones who had excelled academically at KIPP;
they were the ones with exceptional character strengths, like optimism and persistence and
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social intelligence” (Tough n.p.). He noticed that “high grit ratings allowed students with
relatively low college-board scores to nonetheless achieve high G.P.A.’s” (Tough n.p.). Because
we are recognizing that character strengths mean more than the numbers in our exam score,
especially in the long run, the tangle of test mania is beginning to become unknotted, and
we are left with what is really important. The fact that there is visible data that students with
good test scores do not put necessarily put them on a “higher intelligence” pedestal
demonstrates that the standardized test is truly not an accurate measure of intellect, and
one of the largest reasons why we’re realizing this, why this shift is happening, is because
we’ve changed our definition of intelligence. Intelligence was a numerical score. It was our
IQ scores, our SAT scores. It was our this-test-and-that-test scores. Now it’s the strength in
character, whether we can persist through hardships, continue to stay motivated and
ambitious. It’s whether we can effectively communicate, stay optimistic, and push through
large barriers and obstacles. These are qualities a standardized test score could never fully
reflect, and thus, our obsession with standardized testing is beginning to dim down because
a high score doesn’t mean that the taker has a high intelligence anymore.
Let’s revisit Student A, and maybe if he needs it, we can console him as he still stares at the
computer screen. Maybe he thinks his whole life depends on this number, how this number will
determine whether he will end up having a successful career, but maybe he should be aware of
how the weight on standardized testing is dropping. America’s education system is beginning to
go on a standardized testing diet. Our obsession with standardized testing, ever since the creation
of the IQ test to when the number of exams given out to elementary, middle, and high schoolers
has blown our roof top away, is steadily dying down. Student A, more and more universities are
making the SAT I and ACT optional, meaning that, it’s not as big of a deal anymore compared to
your essays, letter of recommendations, and grades. Even admissions officers are focusing on the
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students as a whole, not just the number they churned out on their exams. What they value is
character and who a student truly is, not the numbers that make him or her up. Now, intelligence
isn’t reflected through numbers like we thought it did before. Intelligence has a new meaning.
This shift in definition is not simply a shift among America’s education system, but also an
overall shift of America’s culture, a shift from obsession with numbers to value in people. In
an age of technological races and a chaotic mixture of statistics thrown around here and
there, we can still be human and see humans in others. The shift is just beginning;
standardized testing is still a crazy storm in America’s education, and it’ll take a good
amount of time before it settles into a light rain. I’m positive it will never disappear, and I
don’t want it to disappear, but what I do want is for the obsession to subside, for students to
realize that a score is just a score. It shouldn’t have the giant power, and doesn’t have that
power, to say whether an individual is intelligent and whether this individual will be
successful. What does have that power is character. We still value the intimacy of being
human, the warmth of people-to-people interaction, the personal struggle to overcome a
difficult time, and the mix of qualities that make up who we are. So while you’re filling out
those testing bubbles again Student A, remember, those aren’t the answers to the taker’s
intelligence. Those aren’t the answers to how the success of your life will turn out to be. The
answers aren’t things you need to practice or memorize. In fact, the answers are all within. All
you need to do is discover them and muster them out so that you can walk yourself, not score
yourself, through a successful life.
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Works Cited
Atkinson, Richard. “Standardized Testing and Access to American Universities”. The 2001
Robert Atwell Distinguished Lecture at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the American Council
of Education. Washington D.C. 18 Feb. 2001.
FairTest. "SAT/ACT Optional 4-Year Universities." The National Center for Fair & Open \
Testing. Web. 25 Oct. 2012.
Fletcher, Dan. “Standardized Testing”. TIME. 11 December 2009. Web. 28 Oct. 2012.
Henry, Peter. “The Case Against Standardized Testing”. The Minnesota English Journal. 39-41.
Print.
"History of the SAT: A Timeline." PBS. Web. 29 Oct. 2012.
Jost, Kenneth. "Testing in Schools." CQ Researcher by CQ Press. 20 Apr. 2001. Web. 13 Oct.
2012.
Plucker, Jonathon. "Human Intelligence: Alfred Binet." Human Intelligence. Indiana
University. Web. 29 Oct. 2012.
Plucker, Jonathon. "Human Intelligence: Lewis Madison Terman." Human Intelligence. Indiana
University. Web. 29 Oct. 2012.
Simon, Stephanie. "Parents Protest Surge in Standardized Testing." Reuters. Thomson Reuters,
12 June 2012. Web. 30 Oct. 2012.
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Tough, Paul. “What if the Secret To Success Was Failure”. The New York Times. 14 Sep. 2011.
Web. 13 Oct. 2012.