Testing Reasoning and Reasoning About Testing

the United States in recent years, much worry and writing have been occasioned by the apparent lack of influence of social science research on practical affairs, including affairs of schooling. 1979, for example, Lindblom and Cohen wrote, In public policy making, many suppliers and users of social research are dissatisfied, the former because they are not much listened to, the latter because they do not hear much they want listen to (p. 1). Whatever the merits of the general proposition that social science research has exerted little influence on practical affairs-and in particular, the practice of education-there is one very clear exception this notion. It is the influence that research on testing has exerted on education. This influence will be traced in detail later in this paper, but for the moment, only two works need be cited. Twice in the last two decades, the National Academy of Education has set out explore the relationship between research and education, and how the latter might benefit from the former. These efforts resulted in books which diverse groups of eminent scholars contributed. Each volume gave extended examples of how research has influenced educational practice. The first example in each volume? Research for Tomorrow's Schools (Cronbach & Suppes, 1969), it was Mental Tests and Pupil Classification. Impact of Research on Education (Suppes, 1978), it was On the Theory-Practice Interface in the Measurement of Intellectual Abilities by John Carroll. If theory and research concerning standardized testing have influenced educational practice, it is worth tracing the relationship for several reasons. First, it illustrates the variety of ways in which educational research may influence educational practice. Second, it indicates something of future possibilities and limits for research concerning testing improve teaching and learning. Third, it suggests a point that suppliers... of social research... not much listened to may too easily forget-namely that not all influence is useful or of the stuff which we ought aspire. Thus the purpose of this paper is recount the history of research and reasoning about mental testing and its role in educational practice. The history of this relationship is here divided into three broad parts. The first concerns the roots of mental testing up until approximately World War I (WWI). The second, lasting from WWI until 1950, deals with the refinement of testing techniques and institutionalization of testing in educational practice. The third, lasting from about 1950 through the 1970s, was a time when education emerged prominently on the national agenda, and the role of testing in the agenda became markedly more mixed. Tests were seen variously as indicators of educational problems, as solutions some of those same problems, and as sources of other troubles. The last part of this paper, after summarizing what the relationship between research concerning testing and educational practice has been in the past, suggests research regarding testing that might constructively influence educational practice in the future.