[Editor's note: An early draft version was posted in error. This has been corrected.]
*Guest Post by John Loflin, Education-Community Action Team. johnharrisloflin@yahoo.com
Past and present: Eugenics,
standardized tests, and politics of school reform: Hoosier connections and challenges
“If such a thing as a psycho-analysis of
today’s prototypical culture were possible such an investigation
would needs show the sickness
proper to the time to consist precisely in normality.”
-- Theodore Adorno, Minima Moralia
“Consistent with notions of
American identity, standardized testing, as an opposition to a cultural other,
represents the normalization of whiteness, richness, and
maleness.”
-- Andrew Hartman
YESTERDAY:
THE HOOSIER CONNECTION: THE CULT OF EFFICIENCY
Ellwood
P. Cubberly, Lewis Madison Terman, and David Starr Jordan: Eugenics scientific
school management, and measuring “intelligence”
As
the population grew during pre- and post-WW I America, public education had to
adapt to the complexities of increasing immigration, urbanization, and
industrialization. Out of this era arose a generation of progressive educators
who were steeped in the cult of efficiency (Bernard & Mondale,
2001). They were led by national-class reformers with Indiana roots and
connections.
Ellwood
P. Cubberley (1868-1941) was born in Antioch (later Andrews), Indiana. He
started out
as a teacher in a one-room Indiana schoolhouse, which offered a single
curriculum to all students. Cubberley came to regard this "one-size-fits-all"
education as out of date. As head
of the department of education at Stanford University (1917-1933), Cubberley
trained a generation of administrators in the "science" of school
management (Bernard & Mondale, 2001).
As
a result, instead of offering all students the same classical college prep
curriculum, now in the name of increased “social
efficiency,” high schools now "tracked" students into a
variety of educational paths (Gatto, 2003). According to Shutt (n.d.), Cubberley also:
·
used tests and measurements as techniques to determine “educational
efficiency” and to provide “scientific accuracy” to education
o
supported important concepts such as I.Q.
o
used tests and measurements as “efficiency indicators” to provide
a basis for
·
re-organizing schools,
·
hiring and firing staff, and
·
assessing student performance
·
pioneered the use of the school survey as an instrument to improve
education
o
used statistical and
quantitative methods to assess the strengths and weaknesses of individual
schools
Shutt also noted that Cubberley compared educational process to
industrial production, in that schools should strive to maximize efficiency and
product. Anthony
R. Welch (2010) agrees: Cubberley’s work was "…the origin and development
of the adoption of business values and practices in educational
administration." Welch saw the efficiency movement as based upon the idea
that both individual worth and the work of education can be reduced to economic
terms.
Tracking
seemed an efficient way to sort through growing numbers of students. To
determine placement, school administrators turned to a test invented by a
colleague of Cubberley and fellow Hoosier, Lewis Madison Terman (1877-1956) who
was born in Johnson County, Indiana. In 1917, he prepared the standardized test to
measure what was called a student’s “intelligent quotient,” or IQ. Paul
Chipman, a biographer of Terman, noted that one reason the Stanford-Binet IQ
test was created was to have a way to test every child in the public schools in
order to have a better understanding of each individual’s ability and capacity,
creating a kind of “social efficiency” for the country (Painter, 2010).
Earlier
during World War I, Terman and others field-tested the
Army's Alpha and Beta Intelligence Tests developed by eugenics advocate Robert
Yerkes (1876-1956) to test the “IQ” of 1.7 million US Army recruits. Scores on word and
picture problems helped determine which men would be assigned desk jobs in
Washington, DC, and which would be sent to the trenches in France (Bernard,
& Mondale, 2001). In fact, Terman believed that the intelligence test was a
“technology” that could transform the country and help America achieve a Utopia
(Painter, 2010).
Early
20th century psychologists believed ethnicity affected intelligence.
This idea had unintended consequences. Historian James Anderson concluded that to the extent there
was a sense that IQ tests determined the quality of people by ethnicity, by
race, and/or by class, the very belief in the capacity of people to learn was
undermined--particularly by psychologists like Terman (Painter, 2010).
Interestingly,
Cubberley was brought to Stanford by its new president and: a) former
Indianapolis High School (later Shortridge) science teacher (1874-1875); b) Northwestern
Christian University (later Butler) professor of biology (1875-1879); c) Indiana University professor of
Natural History (1879-1884); and, d) Indiana University president (1884-1891),
David Starr Jordan (1851-1931). While at IU, Jordan also created and taught a
new course for elite students called “Bionomics.” The
class dealt with the “why and how of producing a new evolutionary ruling class
of managers trained in the goals and procedures of new systems.” Cubberley was one of Jordan’s prized
Bionomics students (Gatto, 2003).
Influencing eugenics, the first
sterilization, and the 1907 eugenics law: More Hoosier connections
According to historian Elias Kramer (2008), a
major basis for the eugenic movement was the late 1870s study of the poor by
Rev. Oscar C. McCulloch (Plymouth Congregational Church, Indianapolis). His
argument that the state of being poor (pauperism) was due to a genetically inherited
moral deficiency influenced 20th-century eugenicists who sought to improve the
human race through better breeding.
Both Dr. Terman and Dr. Jordan became renowned
eugenicists. Eugenics, also known as “racial hygiene” or “scientific racism,” was
based on the belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human
species or a human population, especially by such means as discouraging
reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable
undesirable traits (dysgenics). One method was sterilization. As written by Stefan
Kuhl (1994), the first sterilization in the United States was in Indiana. It occurred
in 1899, and was called the “easiest measure to prevent the reproduction of
inferior people.” Indiana soon legalized
sterilization, passing the world’s first eugenics law in 1907.
Of course, reproduction by persons presumed to
have inheritable desirable traits (eugenics) was encouraged. In fact, Better Babies Contests, rooted in eugenics, took place at state fairs.
The
book intended
to promote the eugenics movement and bring its aims to the average
person. Jordan hypothesized that much of the social decline after wars stemmed
from the “dysgenic” effects of those conflicts, which destroyed the fittest and
left young widows who did not remarry and produce more children. The
implication was that the unfit were left to reproduce, and so, lead to “the
collapse of civilization” (Gatto, 2003; Williams, n.d.; David Starr Jordan,
n.d.)
“The
Indiana Procedure
Other
Hoosier connections to the Eugenics movement came during the 1947 trial of
German doctors at
Nuremberg.
Nazi physicians testified that they got the idea for their sterilization program,
which aimed at combating “racial degeneracy,” from America. The German name for
forced sterilization was "the Indiana Procedure" (Gatto, 2003). Also
see: http://kobescent.com/eugenics/bibliography.html
In
summary, the Cult of Efficiency had three stages:
1. eugenics (scientific
racism) set the standards via defining normalcy
2. the IQ test sorted and
ranked students
3. “scientific” school
management provided the solution and was carried out through “tracking,” and
teacher and school evaluations done with “quantitative accuracy”
TODAY: THE HOOSIER CHALLENGE: THE CULT OF
ACHIEVEMENT
NCLB, high stakes standardized test scores
and the re-emergence of the Cult of Efficiency
Is the 1920’s Cult of Efficiency re-emerging in
the NCLB assumption that standardized test-based accountability is the best
response to any and all real or imagined education problems?
As was attempted by Cubberley, Turman, and
Jordan almost 100 years ago, is the NCLB law trying to quantify quality--a quality teacher,
student, school, district, and a quality education--through test score results?
The Cult of
Efficiency becomes the “Cult of Achievement”
Presently,
the Cult of Efficiency is returning in the form of the “Cult of Achievement.”
Each is based on tests and measurements which are
said to use statistical and quantitative methods of assessment which provide “scientific
accuracy” and thus serve as “efficiency indicators.”
Two
of the major examples of the Cult of Achievement are 1) “super parenting” and 2)
the achievement gap. Super parents
use pre-natal education systems (See www.babyplus.com) or other means by which they give their
child/ren a head start. Also, there is the “exmissions” phenomenon where parents
plan out the child’s education from pre-school on. Here, parents prepare to compete
with other parents to get their child/ren into the “right” program or school, “tracking”
them to be in a “Nursery University” (Catsoulis, 2009), or the best K-12 schools
and colleges. Families even practice “red shirting” by keeping children back a
grade so they can have a competitive edge in sports and academics. Other
families keep their child/ren in Kaplan and other tutoring programs so they
have an advantage in grades and test scores. “Success at all costs” best describes
the Cult of Achievement.
The
“Achievement Gap” concerns differences in scores on standardized tests among
various groups, especially white and black students. To understand the various levels in achievement between white
and black students, the gaps must be appreciated as the reflection of the differences
between America’s dominant and minority cultures. From the point of view of the
majority, the cultural capital of African American community (language, values,
behavior) is seen as deficient or defective and must be traded for the cultural
capital of the dominant culture which is deemed superior and necessary for
achievement and success. Schools are the places where students become
assimilated and standardized tests are used to judge how well they have
acquired the cultural capital of the dominant society in the form of the state
curriculum.
So-called
“mental defectives” were sterilized in the past under Eugenics laws using
standardized tests to measure levels of intellectual capacities and abilities.
Today, standardized test scores are used to determine how well students meet
grade-level standards. Since historically it’s the children of color and the
working class poor who lack achievement, the gap implies (as it did in the
1920s) that those students unable to meet standards on standardized tests are deficient
and depicted as lesser, or “in need.”
Today interventions
are used instead of sterilization
This
deficient, even “faulty” quality is reinforced and validated by today’s
educational response. Instead of sterilization, interventions are used: tutoring, longer school days, teacher
incentives, more and constant testing, mentoring, a longer school year, school
uniforms, on-line courses, charters, and single genders schools and classes. These
activities are to make up for the child’s deficiencies and “lesser-ness.” Yet, doesn’t
the very presence of these “interventions” actually enable a sort of neo-eugenics
stigma placed on some students as “lacking” and being unfit?
The issue is standardized tests, be they IQ or
ISTEP: Are these tests flawed and biased?
What
is an issue here, and consequently the way No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
justifies its major decisions, is the concern that standardized testing is
fundamentally flawed and biased.
Wayne
Au argues: If all the students passed at state’s standardized test (i.e., the
ISTEP used by the Indiana Department of Education [IDOE] to judge Indiana students
and schools), that test would immediately be judged an invalid metric because any
measure of students which mandates the failure of students is an invalid
measure
[italics mine] (Hagopian,
2012). What does this mean?
Au
was referring to “norm-referenced measures” like the ISTEP which are designed
to compare students. ISTEP is intentionally designed to disperse average
student scores along a bell curve, with some students performing very well,
most performing average, and a few performing poorly. For example, 34% are
always “above average,” 34% are always “below average.” Seen from this perspective, Au has a
valid point: any official state assessments which in fact mandate the
failure of any student is flawed.
“…there will always be a
testing a gap.”
Au’s
point is supported by James Popham (2004) who notes that since standardized tests
must produce a wide spread of scores from high to low, exams must have a “wide
range” of difficulty. So, which questions produce the widest range?--those most
closely linked to socio-economic status (SES). He found that between 15-80% of the questions (depending on
the subject area) on norm-referenced exams were linked to SES. With SES status
out of the control school officials, Popham concludes, there will always be a testing
gap: children of the poor will tend to have the lower scores.
Is
this the way our public schools measure learning by ensuring some will always
score low, making high stakes standardized tests “A game without winners”
(Popham, 2004)? Has this education policy become a racket enabling cheating by
students, teachers, and school leaders (Robinson, 2013)?
“These studies [Joseph & Holland’s “Equal
Opportunity and Racial Differences in IQ”] show us that the races are equal;
this result leads us to question the construct validity of many current
standardized tests of verbal aptitude. [A]…review [of] my…studies…suggest a
systematic underestimation of the ability of minorities. My studies question
not only the construct validity, but also the reliability of the scores used to
assess
individual test performance, especially for minority students and even White
students from lower socio-economic strata.”
~Dr. Roy Freedle (2012)
The SAT: Cousin of the IQ test (Bernard & Mondale,
2001)
So,
not only is the issue that some students will always fail, but also: what is
the norm and upon what is it based? Jay Rosen (2003) asserts it is based on “white
preference.”
“My considered hypothesis is that every question chosen to appear on every SAT
in the past ten years has favored whites over blacks.” On the October 1998 SAT,
for example, every single one of the 138 questions (60 math and 78 verbal)
favored whites over blacks. By favoring whites, I mean that a higher percentage
of white than black students answered correctly every question pre-screened and
chosen to appear on that SAT. I call these ‘white preference questions.’"
Rosen
goes on to write, “Each individual SAT question RTS (Educational Testing
Services) chooses is required to parallel the outcomes of the test overall. So,
if high-scoring test-takers, who are more likely to be white, tend to answer
the question correctly in pretesting, it's a worthy SAT question; if not, it's
thrown out.”
In
other words, although tests questions need not favor any group or individual,
pre-screened test questions favoring African American students are taken out.
Though this is a type of so-called “scientific” method of producing tests, it creates
a biased exam.
“Standardized tests are the
last form of legalized discrimination in the US.”
~ Phil Harris,
co-author of The Myth of Standardized Tests,
stated at the
01.05.12 Indianapolis Education-Community Action Team meeting
Meritocracy or “Testocracy”
If standardized tests are flawed, or if there are doubts
concerning the authenticity of these measurements, America's promise of equal
educational opportunity for all citizens is discredited. What is
presented to Hoosiers as meritocracy (that ability and talent rather than
class, privilege or wealth determines success) could actually be a “testocracy”
(the
increasing reliance on standardized test scores as status placement in society). For a closer look at this issue see:
Equal
educational opportunity is not a system where
those Americans who have the financial, cultural, or political means to prepare
for and pass standardized tests have an advantage over students who do not. Those
who support the use of high stakes standardized tests claim the intent of the
exam is to improve education for lower-income families, and children of color.
But this method of accountability accomplishes the opposite.
"We
are using the testocracy as a proxy for privilege."
~ Professor Lanni Guinier
…and what comes after
testocracy? Alternatives to standardized tests
The
researchers at the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) evidently see through
to when “the current testing hysteria subsides.” As reported by CES, their organization is critical in
creating meaningful learning environments that include multiple assessment methods
for multiple learning tasks. www.essentialschools.org/resources/273. For alternative assessments see:
“Unequal
By Design critically examines high-stakes standardized testing,
illuminating what is really at stake for students, teachers, and communities
negatively affected by such testing. This thoughtful analysis traces
standardized testing’s origins in the Eugenics and Social Efficiency movements
of the late 19th and early 20th century through its current use as the central
tool for national educational reform via No Child Left Behind. By exploring
historical, social, economic, and educational aspects of testing, author Wayne
Au demonstrates that these tests are not only premised on the creation of
inequality, but that their structures are inextricably intertwined with social
inequalities that exist outside of schools.”
A reminder of how and why standardized
testing originally entered the public schools
The overuse and misuse of
standardized testing--confusing higher test scores with better schooling--has
been and currently is suspect. Parents, teachers, students, educators, board
members, legislators, and community and faith-based organizations should
distance themselves from this metric NCLB uses to justify its policies. As a
community who love children, we Hoosiers need to take a deep and honest look
into the history of standardized testing. When we do we will learn about:
·
its connection to Eugenics (scientific racism)
o
Indiana was the global home of a codified Eugenics (normalcy)
and used standardized testing to determine legalized sterilization actions
·
its political and discriminatory characteristics
·
its use to validate the prejudice that certain students’
genetics (and implied home cultures) are inferior and certain other students’
genetics (and implied home culture) are superior.
“In fact, I would argue that
NCLB is itself a 21st century representation of eugenicist pseudo-science in
its use of standards-based, Cartesian, modernist representation of what (literally) counts
as learning and how it can be measured. This measurement of learning is a
distinctly Eugenicist construct that has long been used as a way to sort
people. NCLB ratchets this approach up a notch by sorting schools, not just
individuals.”
The very idea that standardization,
used to validate “normalcy,” was:
1) constructed, rationalized, and codified in the form of Eugenics laws right
here in Indianapolis in 1907, and is 2) continually reinforced in 2013 by NCLB
standardized testing requirements (such as ISTEP) which actually enable zero
tolerance policies forcing certain students into “the school-to-prison
pipeline” (Advancement Project, 2010), is in itself, enough reason for Hoosiers
to take an honest and realistic educational position towards this historically biased
form of academic measurement.
“Rather than accepting
standardized testing as an essential entity, and argue for or against
increasing it, my intention is to unmask standardized testing as an important
form of social production that has served the American political economy. As a
method of social production, as well as social reproduction, standardized
testing has had serious cultural implications, not the least of which has been
the eternal question of American identity. Consistent with notions of American
identity, standardized testing, as an opposition to a cultural other,
represents the normalization of whiteness, richness, and maleness.”
A SUMMARY
If the IDOE does not discredit standardized
tests, will public education be discredited?
Remember Herrnstein’s and
Murray’s 1996 book, The Bell
Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, where
the authors mixed science and measurement (standardized IQ tests) to generalize about racial differences in intelligence? This deficit model of humanity must first
be reviewed and critiqued if Indiana is to honestly look at standardization
measurements.
Why IDOE and the State Board of Education do not
recognize and discredit the inherent limitations of using standardized tests
(ISTEP) scores reflects on Indiana. To judge a student’s yearly all-over
performance based on one score from one test given at one time on one day--and
under the pressured conditions of standardization and “high-stakes” which each
student/family in Indiana and the nation experiences, may make sense to some
educators, politicians, business people, or even families.
However, the standardization of high stakes tests
is based on: 1) “normalcy” and epitomized via norm-referencing tests where some
will always fail regardless of actual achievement, 2) a history of racial
discrimination associated with the testing--particularly in how tests are
calibrated--as well as the cultural bias associated with intelligence
measurement such as IQ, and 3) the eugenic deficit model of humanity, a model
with neither scientific nor moral merit.
There
is also the legacy of Indiana’s leadership in eugenics law and official use of
standardized tests regarding who or who did not get sterilized (The American,
Henry Goddard. used the Binet-Simon Measuring Scale to determine degrees of
intelligence or levels of feeblemindedness [Plucker, 2003]). IDOE cannot
support equal educational opportunity while supporting such forms of
measurement.
In
conclusion
If
there were a state in America which has reason to discredit and abandon the
current era of high stakes
standardized testing and
use strength-based multi-measurements to assess student learning and schools, it
is Indiana. These fairer methods are assessments which will challenge the Indiana
legacy of bias and discrimination dating back to Eugenic-inspired measures of
intelligence (IQ tests).
We Hoosiers must begin
the difficult task of removing once and for all any public doubt about the limitations
of standardized tests. Once we shine the light of day on the social-political
nature and purpose of high stakes standardized testing, no sensible Hoosier family
or educator, and no enlightened employer, union, politician, community
organization or faith-based institution will validate this product of the underbelly
of American society.
References
Advancement
Project. (2010). Test, Punish
& Push Out: How “zero tolerance” and high stakes testing
funnel youth into the
school-to-prison pipeline,
Bernard,
S. & Mondale, S. (Eds). (2001). School: The story of American public
education. Boston:
Beacon Press.
Catsoulis,
J. (2009, April 23). Nursery University (2008): First Preschool, Then the Ivy
League. The
David
Starr Jordan. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved January 17, 2013, from
Freedle, Roy. (2006). How and Why
Standardized Tests Systematically Underestimate African-
Americans' True Verbal Ability and What to
Do About It: Towards the Promotion of Two New
Theories with Practical Applications,"
St. John's Law Review. 80(1), Article 7.
Kramer,
E. (2008). Recasting the Tribe of Ishmael: The Role of Indianapolis' 19th
Century Poor
in 20th
Eugenics. Indiana Magazine of History. 104(1), 36-64.
Kuhl,
S. (1994). The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German
National Socialism.
Oxford University
Press.
Painter,
N. (2010). The History of White People. NY: W. W. Norton & Company. Lewis Terman: pp.
281,
283; David Jordan: pp. 265, 310, 343; sterilization: pp. 273-277, 281.
Plucker, J. A. (Ed.). (2003). Goddard and the Kallikak
Family. Human intelligence:
Historical
Popham,
J. (2004). A game without winners. Educational Leadership. 62(3), 46-50.
Robinson, E. (2013, April 3). The test score racket makes
cheating inevitable. Washington Post.
Shutt, J. (n.d.). Ellwood Cubberley (1868–1941) - Education
and Career, Contribution.
StateUniversity.com.
Welch,
A. (1998). The Cult of Efficiency in Education: Comparative reflections on the
reality and the
rhetoric. Comparative
Education.
34(2), 157-175.
Williams,
G. (n.d.). David Starr Jordan. Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist
Biography.
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Universalist History
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