Testing for competence rather than for "intelligence."

The testing movement in the United States has been a success, if one judges success by the usual American criteria of size, influence, and profitability. Intelligence and aptitude tests are used nearly everywhere by schools, colleges, and employers. It is a sign of backwardness not to have test scores in the school records of children. The Educational Testing Service alone employs about 2,000 people, annually administers Scholastic Aptitude Tests to thousands of aspirants to college, and makes enough money to support a large basic research operation. Its tests have tremendous power over the lives of young people by stamping some of them qualified and others less qualified for college work. Until recent exceptions were made (over the protest of some), the tests have served as a very efficient device for screening out black, Spanish-speaking, and other minority applicants to colleges. Admissions officers have protested that they take other qualities besides test achievements into account in granting admission, but careful studies by Wing and Wallach (1971) and others have shown that this is true only to a very limited degree. Why should intelligence or aptitude tests have all this power? What justifies the use of such tests in selecting applicants for college entrance or jobs? On what assumptions is the success of the movement based? They deserve careful examination before we go on rather blindly promoting the use of tests as instruments of power over the lives of many Americans. article contains the substance of remarks made at a public lecture given at the Educational Testing Service,