Standardized test
A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent or standard manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner.
A standardized test is administered and scored uniformly for all test takers. Any test in which the same test is given in the same manner to all test takers, and graded in the same manner for everyone, is a standardized test. Standardized tests do not need to be high-stakes tests, time-limited tests, multiple-choice tests, academic tests, or tests given to large numbers of test takers. Standardized tests can take various forms, including written, oral, or practical test. The standardized test may evaluate many subjects, including driving, creativity, athleticism, personality, professional ethics, as well as academic skills.
The opposite of standardized testing is non-standardized testing, in which either significantly different tests are given to different test takers, or the same test is assigned under significantly different conditions or evaluated differently.
Most everyday quizzes and tests taken by students during school meet the definition of a standardized test: everyone in the class takes the same test, at the same time, under the same circumstances, and all of the tests are graded by their teacher in the same way. However, the term standardized test is most commonly used to refer to tests that are given to larger groups, such as a test taken by all adults who wish to acquire a license to get a particular job, or by all students of a certain age. Most standardized tests are summative assessments.
Because everyone gets the same test and the same grading system, standardized tests are often perceived as being fairer than non-standardized tests. Such tests are often thought of as more objective than a system in which some test takers get an easier test and others get a more difficult test. Standardized tests are designed to permit reliable comparison of outcomes across all test takers because everyone is taking the same test and being graded the same way.
Definition
The definition of a standardized test has changed somewhat over time. In 1960, standardized tests were defined as those in which the conditions and content were equal for everyone taking the test, regardless of when, where, or by whom the test was given or graded. Standardized tests have a consistent, uniform method for scoring. This means that all test takers who answer a test question in the same way will get the same score for that question. The purpose of this standardization is to make sure that the scores reliably indicate the abilities or skills being measured, and not other variables.By the beginning of the 21st century, the focus shifted away from a strict sameness of conditions towards equal fairness of testing conditions. For example, a test taker with a broken wrist might write more slowly because of the injury, and it would be more equitable, and produce a more reliable understanding of the test taker's actual knowledge, if that person were given a few more minutes to write down the answers to a time-limited test. Changing the testing conditions in a way that improves fairness with respect to a permanent or temporary disability, but without undermining the main point of the assessment, is called an accommodation. However, if the accommodation undermines the purpose of the test, then the allowances would become a modification of the content, and no longer a standardized test.
| Subject | Format | Standardized test | Non-standardized test | |
| History | Oral | Each student is given the same questions, and their answers are scored in the same way. | The teacher asks each student a different question. Some questions are harder than others. | |
| Driving | Practical skills | Each driving student is asked to do the same things, and they are all evaluated by the same standards. | Some driving students have to drive on a highway, but others only have to drive slowly around the block. One examiner takes points off for "bad attitude", but other examiners do not. | |
| Mathematics | Written | Each student is given the same questions, and their answers are scored in the same way. | The teacher gives different questions to different students: an easy test for poor students, another test for most students, and a difficult test for the best students. | |
| Music | Audition | All musicians play the same piece of music. The judges agreed in advance how much factors such as timing, expression, and musicality count for. | Each musician chooses a different piece of music to play. Judges choose the musician they like best. One judge gives extra points to musicians who wear a costume. |
History
China
The earliest evidence of standardized testing was in China, during the Han dynasty, where the imperial examinations covered the Six Arts which included music, archery, horsemanship, arithmetic, writing, and knowledge of the rituals and ceremonies of both public and private parts. These exams were used to select employees for the state bureaucracy.Later, sections on military strategies, civil law, revenue and taxation, agriculture and geography were added to the testing. In this form, the examinations were institutionalized for more than a millennium.
Today, standardized testing remains widely used, most notably in the Gaokao system.
UK
Standardized testing was introduced into Europe in the early 19th century, modeled on the Chinese mandarin examinations, through the advocacy of British colonial administrators, the most "persistent" of which was Britain's consul in Guangzhou, China, Thomas Taylor Meadows. Meadows warned of the collapse of the British Empire if standardized testing was not implemented throughout the empire immediately.Prior to their adoption, standardized testing was not traditionally a part of Western pedagogy. Based on the skeptical and open-ended tradition of debate inherited from Ancient Greece, Western academia favored non-standardized assessments using essays written by students. Because of this, the first European implementation of standardized testing did not occur in Europe proper, but in British India. Inspired by the Chinese use of standardized testing, in the early 19th century, British company managers used standardized exams for hiring and promotions to keep the process fair and free from corruption or favoritism. This practice of standardized testing was later adopted in the late 19th century in the Britain mainland. The parliamentary debates that ensued made many references to the "Chinese mandarin system".
Standardized testing spread from Britain not only throughout the British Commonwealth, but to Europe and then America. Its spread was fueled by the Industrial Revolution, where the increase in number of school students as a result of compulsory education laws decreased the use of open-ended assessments, which were harder to mass-produce and assess objectively.
Standardized tests such as the War Office Selection Boards were developed for the British Army during World War II to choose candidates for officer training and other tasks. The tests looked at soldiers' mental abilities, mechanical skills, ability to work with others, and other qualities. Previous methods had suffered from bias and resulted in choosing the wrong soldiers for officer training.
United States
Standardized testing has been a part of United States education since the 19th century, but the widespread reliance on standardized testing in schools in the US is largely a 20th-century phenomenon.Immigration in the mid-19th century contributed to the growth of standardized tests in the United States. Standardized tests were used when people first entered the US to test social roles and find social power and status.
The College Entrance Examination Board began offering standardized testing for university and college admission in 1901, covering nine subjects. This test was implemented with the idea of creating standardized admissions for the United States in northeastern elite universities. Originally, the test was also meant for top boarding schools, in order to align the curriculum between schools. Originally the standardized test was made of essays and was not intended for widespread testing.
During World War I, the Army Alpha and Beta tests were developed to help place new recruits in appropriate assignments based upon their assessed intelligence levels. The first edition of a modern standardized test for IQ, the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Test, appeared in 1916. The College Board then designed the SAT in 1926. The first SAT test was based on the Army IQ tests, with the goal of determining the test taker's intelligence, problem-solving skills, and critical thinking. In 1959, Everett Lindquist offered the ACT for the first time. As of 2020, the ACT includes four main sections with multiple-choice questions to test English, mathematics, reading, and science, plus an optional writing section.
Individual states began testing large numbers of children and teenagers through the public school systems in the 1970s. By the 1980s, American schools were assessing nationally. In 2012, 45 states paid an average of $27 per student, and $669 million overall, on large-scale annual academic tests. However, indirect costs, such as paying teachers to prepare students for the tests and for class time spent administering the tests, significantly exceed the direct cost of the test itself.
The need for the federal government to make meaningful comparisons across a highly de-centralized public education system encouraged the use of large-scale standardized testing. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 required some standardized testing in public schools. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 further tied some types of public school funding to the results of standardized testing. Under these federal laws, the school curriculum was still set by each state, but the federal government required states to assess how well schools and teachers were teaching the state-chosen material with standardized tests. The results of large-scale standardized tests were used to allocate funds and other resources to schools, and to close poorly performing schools. The Every Student Succeeds Act replaced the NCLB at the end of 2015. By that point, these large-scale standardized tests had become controversial in the United States not necessarily because all the students were taking the same tests and being scored the same way, but because they had become high-stakes tests for the school systems and teachers.
In recent years, many US universities and colleges have abandoned the requirement of standardized test scores by applicants.