One difficulty in dealing with the results of school work has been that schools have had no clear definition of what ought to be demanded. Opinion has been matched against opinion. Thus the parent often feels that he has a right to pass unqualified judgment on the progress of his child and on the teacher’s methods of dealing with him. The employer demands of the boy whom he employs a certain proficiency in spelling and adding. The superintendent, in pursuance of his duties, tells the teachers that their work is satisfactory or otherwise and that the children do or do not read as well as they should. The teacher has a certain expectation, and the pupil feels sure that he is doing his work well. Each, according to his personal standard, is estimating the work done in the school.
Very often these standards differ when applied to one and the same performance; sometimes they differ so radically that social troubles follow. The parent says that his child is doing satisfactory work, while the teacher estimates the work as inferior. In such a case it happens, often after a controversy, that one standard ultimately prevails. It is a matter of record in some communities that the parent’s standard has at times been asserted with enough energy to result in the removal of the dissenting teacher from office. On the other hand, it is more commonly true that the teacher’s standard dominates, and the pupil either changes his ways or fails of promotion. In either case, it would have been better for all concerned if some exact standard could have been set up which would have been recognized as superior in its sanction to individual opinion.
Even teachers of experience disagree in grading the same examination paper. One demands correctness in every detail, while the other concentrates attention on originality and force of expression.
Objective and Exact Standards
The effort to lay down by investigation satisfactory standards of school work is one of the most productive lines of educational inquiry which has ever been instituted. Like all great movements, this movement of standardization has been misunderstood and opposed, but it is steadily gaining ground and promises to be the largest contribution of this generation to education.
In essence it consists of a careful, systematic measurement of what pupils accomplish. If there are at hand measurements of the actual achievements of pupils in various subjects in all the grades, it is safe to compare any single performance with the general average. It should be noted that this does not imply a demand that every pupil’s work be like the average. There are pupils who do their work under unfavorable conditions, as, for example, pupils who have difficulty in reading because they hear no English at home. Their results should not be expected to reach the average, at least in the early grades. How far the results are from the average should, however, be definitely known. Explanation can then be given. Where conditions are not unfavorable the demand can be the more vigorously made that the average expectation be reached.
Beginnings of the Movement
The way in which this movement began and the rapidity with which it has progressed are vividly described by one of its chief exponents as follows:
Eighteen years ago the school superintendents of America, assembled in convention in Indianapolis, discussed the problems then foremost in educational thought and action. At that meeting a distinguished educator[69]—the pioneer and pathfinder among the scientific students of education in America—brought up for discussion the results of his investigations of spelling among the children in the school systems of nineteen cities. These results showed that, taken all in all, the children who spent forty minutes a day for eight years in studying spelling did not spell any better than the children in the schools of other cities where they devoted only ten minutes per day to the study.
The presentation of these data threw that assemblage into consternation, dismay, and indignant protest. But the resulting storm of vigorously voiced opposition was directed not against the methods and results of the investigation, but against the investigator who had pretended to measure the results of teaching spelling by testing the ability of children to spell.
In terms of scathing denunciation the educators there present and the pedagogical experts, who reported the deliberations of the meeting in the educational press, characterized as silly, dangerous, and from every viewpoint reprehensible, the attempt to test the efficiency of the teacher by finding out what the pupils could do. With striking unanimity they voiced the conviction that any attempt to evaluate the teaching of spelling in terms of the ability of the pupils to spell was essentially impossible and based on a profound misconception of the function of education.
Last month in the city of Cincinnati that same association of school superintendents, again assembled in convention, devoted fifty-seven addresses and discussions to tests and measurements of educational efficiency. The basal proposition underlying this entire mass of discussion was that the effectiveness of the school, the methods, and the teachers must be measured in terms of the results secured.[70]