by Jeffrey A Fuller

Created on: June 25, 2010

America’s reliance on standardized testing is rooted in the Eisenhower administration. In 1957 Soviet Union Launched the spacecraft Sputnik into orbit in sparking the notion that the Soviet Union had a better education system and could therefore produce better scientists. The theory was later inherited buy the Kennedy administration and with the escalating cold war between the U.S. and Russia, the idea took on a powerful political stance.

During the Johnson administration, proceeding Kennedy’s assassination, education improvement became very significant as inequalities were exposed by civil rights activists who lobbied for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Education became the central focus of Johnson’s “War on Poverty” and “Great Society” programs, which led to the passage of Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965 (Brown-Nagin). ESEA focused primarily on Educator development, funding for special programs, and resources for schools with a high percentage of students living in poverty. In turn, standardized testing was used to gage the effectiveness of funds disbursed through ESEA. 

The next crucial stage of evolution for standardized testing came in 1983 with the publishing of a thirty page political document issued by the National Commission on Excellence in Education entitled “A Nation at Risk”.  The document had been commission by the Reagan White House to win female voters with a domestic issue for Reagan’s reelection campaign (Ansary).  Its impact and propagation of an education reform movement came about purely by accident, and an unfortunate one at that. Edwin Meese III, a Reagan advisor, urged him to reject the report because it did not address Reagan’s agenda to get federal government out of education, although he assumed it did; Reagan did not read the document before making it a pivotal issue for his campaign platform (Ansary).

The report, “A Nation at Risk,” although irrelevant mainly because of its pretense, fueled fiery endeavors involving our nations education system. As a result of the educational reform movement standardized tests became a major component regarding school accountability and after the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001 (which is actually the renewal of ESEA under a new name), standardized tests became the “end all-be all” that placed a huge underfunded burden on schools and teachers. Initially

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>