Why National Curriculum Testing is Founded on a Methodological Thought Disorder

Standards-based reports of school performance such as '42% of our pupils are at level 6 in science' create a mistaken impression that National Curriculum standards enable the academic output of schools to be quantified and measured objectively. This represents a failure to grasp the distinction between psychological measurement and measurement in the physical sciences. Michell (1997) describes the tendency to confuse the former with the latter as psychology's methodological thought disorder. While measures in the physical sciences must be demonstrably ordered and additive before being deemed quantitative, Michell (1997) claims that psychological measurement may be little more than numerical coding. This article argues that the architects of national testing, who posited a measuring scale in which consecutive levels were separated by two years of learning, did so in the grip of Michell's thought disorder. The case is made that the entire National Curriculum enterprise has only been able to proceed because the level of transparency urged upon schools is not demanded of the Qualifications and Assessment Authority (QCA). Schools will only be protected from thought-disordered policy-makers when the QCA is required to adopt a code of standards similar to the USA's Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing.