Qualifying Tests and the Development of Written Examinations in the West

In the Western world, the earliest qualifying tests were demonstrations of the mastery of skills. Medieval craft guilds regulated advancement to the status of master craftsman through juries that would judge masterpieces submitted by candidates as evidence of their workmanship. It was similar in the medieval and Renais-

sance universities, where candidates would prove their mastery of a body of knowledge by means of oral examinations, called disputations. Often these took the form of the candidate expounding on an assigned text and then defending his position against the questions and critique of faculty examiners. Compurgators (character witnesses) had their place in universities as well as in medieval law courts (see chap. 2). At Oxford, candidates had to swear that they had read certain books, and nine regent masters were required to testify to their "knowledge" of the candidate's sufficiency and an additional five to their "belief" in his sufficiency.^[25]

The first written examination in Europe apparently took place at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1702.^[26] It was a test in mathematics. This seems appropriate, for while theology, morality, or metaphysics lend themselves well to examination by oral disputation, the problem-solving abilities essential to mathematics and the natural sciences are more readily demonstrated in written form. Oxford, which stressed mathematics and the sciences less than Cambridge, was somewhat slower to change. Written examinations were introduced there in 1800,^[27] and by 1830, both universities were abandoning oral disputations in favor of written tests.

The earliest record of university examinations in North America is a 1646 requirement that, in oral disputation, the Harvard University degree recipient "prove he could read the Old and New Testament in Latin and 'Resolve them Logically.'"^[28] Examinations were not common in colonial times, and in 1762, students at Yale University refused to submit to them other than at the time of graduation.^[29] During the first half of the nineteenth century, however, examinations grew both in importance and frequency. Yale's President Woolsey instituted biennial examinations at the close of the second and fourth years of instruction. Following developments at Cambridge and Oxford, they were in written form. For its part, Harvard's first written examination, in mathematics, was given in 1833. Considerable emphasis was laid on examinations at Mount Holyoke, where, in the 1830s, the idea was current that progress through the seminary should be measured not according to the amount of time a student has spent there but according to performance on examinations. The trend continued as the century

wore on. Harvard introduced written entrance examinations in 1851, and Yale moved from biennial to annual examinations in 1865.^[30]

The frequency and format of examinations in American universities was also greatly affected by important curricular developments during the nineteenth century. The pattern of a uniform, classical curriculum that all students were expected to master lent itself to periodic examinations (annual, biennial, or only at the time of graduation), identical for all students of a given level, and designed, administered, and graded by persons who were not necessarily the students' tutors. Some dissatisfaction with the classical curriculum had been expressed, but the Yale Report of 1828 defended it on the grounds that it developed the mental discipline necessary for the educated person in any walk of life and that any practical or professional training was inappropriate for a college. Although delayed by the Yale Report, elective systems in which students could select among several prescribed curricula, or could design their personalized educational program from a variety of subjects, were introduced at various points in the nineteenth century by the University of Virginia, Brown University, the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Cornell University, and Johns Hopkins University. Early on, these met with varying degrees of success, but they set the trend that after 1900 became established as the rule in American higher education.^[31] This development had a significant impact on modes of assessment. Standard examinations based on a common curriculum are obviously inappropriate for students following different programs of study. Much better suited to the elective system is the now-familiar pattern of separate examinations in each course, devised and graded by the instructor.

Soon after their introduction in the colleges, written examinations diffused to the public schools. Boston's elementary and secondary schools had long followed the practice of annual oral examinations conducted by committees of visiting examiners. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, it was becoming impossible for these panels effectively to examine the large number of students involved, particularly in the more populous elementary schools. In 1845, faced with the daunting prospect of examining

over 7,000 children in nineteen schools, Boston introduced a written examination. It was probably the first large-scale written test to be used in American public schools. Its goals were well conceptualized:

It was our wish to have as fair an examination as possible; to give the same advantages to all; to prevent leading questions; to carry away, not loose notes, or vague remembrances of the examination, but positive information, in black and white; to ascertain with certainty what the scholars did not know, as well as what they did know.^[32]

There were a few practical wrinkles at the beginning. The same test was given in all schools, and although it was printed, it did not occur to the committee to have it administered in all schools simultaneously. Instead they gave it in the schools one at a time, rushing as quickly as possible from one school to the next in an effort to prevent knowledge of the questions reaching some schools before the test did.^[33] Such flaws were soon smoothed out, however, and by the middle of the next decade, written examinations had been adopted by public school systems in nearly all the major cities in the country.^[34]

Competitive, written examinations came to exert massive influence, constituting "possibly the single most intrusive and expensive innovation in Western education in the last century."^[35] From their origins in the schools, written examinations began in the nineteenth century to proliferate widely throughout the rest of society. A spirit of reform was in the air in Britain as means were sought to improve social policy in ways consistent with the demands of an industrial society and global empire. Beginning around 1850, examinations were settled on as the means to curtail the old patronage system and rationalize personnel selection and appointments in a variety of contexts. The resulting impact of examinations in British life was immense. E. E. Kellett, in his 1936 autobiography, recalls that in his youth, examinations had been "almost the be-all and end-all of school life. . . . If, in fact, I were asked what, in my opinion, was an essential article of the Victorian faith, I should say it was 'I believe in Examinations.'"^[36]

The India Act of 1853 introduced competitive examinations for the Indian Civil Service (the first examinations were held in 1855), and new examinations for army commissions followed in 1857–58.^[37] By 1870, most positions in the civil service were subject to competitive examination.^[38] Examinations also influenced the lives of the lower classes. The Department of Science and Art, a government agency, was founded in 1853 to stimulate British industry by assisting the technical training of artisans. The department operated largely through examinations, inaugurating a test for teachers in 1859 and one for students in 1860. Reluctant to expend its funds on anything other than concrete results, the department established a scheme whereby it paid teachers one pound for each student who achieved a third-class pass, two pounds for a second-class pass, and three pounds for a first-class pass on its examinations.^[39]

The flow of written tests from the universities into other sectors of society occurred on a smaller scale in the nineteenth-century United States than in Great Britain. Testing in America, as we will see, flowered in the twentieth century, by which time the technology of testing had undergone significant changes. However, some testing was introduced into the federal bureaucracy during the nineteenth century. It was largely a political matter. The spoils system had become so entrenched that, in the 1860s, the election of a new president brought about a complete change in government employees. The result, of course, was a poorly trained and inefficient civil service. The assassination of President Garfield by a disgruntled office seeker served as the catalyst for the passage of the first step toward reform: the Civil Service Act of 1883. It was a small beginning, bringing just 10 percent of government employees under a system wherein jobs were awarded on the basis of examinations and protected against changes in political administrations. Nevertheless, by 1908, the civil service system had been expanded to cover some 60 percent of the federal work force.^[40]

The United States, of course, was founded partly to escape the class privileges of Europe, and the radical democratic spirit that prevailed here fostered a distrust of elites of any sort. This produced an attitude toward civil service examinations very different

from that which prevailed in Britain. Government jobs in an egalitarian society, it was held, should be such that anyone would be able to fill them. For this reason, early American civil service examinations were quite simple and stressed practical, job-related skills.^[41]