The Measurement Business

Abstract

W HEN new developments in a field of educational policy and practice come to be discussed in the New Tork Times and in some of the popular magazines of the better group, it is a reliable indication that these developments are being considered seriously in numerous educational committees, associations, and journals, and are of interest and significance to the lay public. At the present time this is true of educational testing and educational measurements. For generations we have centered our attention on the mechanical arrangements designed to facilitate the pursuit of education without having developed anything approaching an adequate method of measuring validly and reliably the educational product. We have proceeded with a pious hope or blind faith that, if the educational machinery were designed as well as possible, the educational results would be the best attainable. Recent attempts to measure results more scientifically have been conducted with sufficient success to show that at many points our faith and hope have been misplaced-that results from a given educational set-up are not what we had hoped or taken for granted. Improved methods of testing educational outcomes which have recently been developed, have forced in many quarters a more precise definition of attainable educational objectives and a more critical examination of instructional methods-methods that have persisted for generations merely on presumption. It is my belief that the results of such enterprises of educational testing and measurements as those now being conducted by the Pennsylvania study, the Co-operative Test Service, the College Entrance