Merit (1920-1945)
The Pennsylvania Study
The College Board was interested in the differences between the school record of a student and the results of his College Board examinations for purposes of predictability.
The Pennsylvania Study was intended to determine the value of using College Entrance Examination Board tests for college admissions. Sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the Pennsylvania Study was conducted between 1928 and 1938. It explored the relationships among student ability, college admissions, and the development of native talent.
The Pennsylvania Study initially began in 1928 as an examination of the state's schools and colleges. The study entailed administering series of intelligence and achievement examinations to high school and college seniors. It was meant to measure a student's knowledge, not his mastery of a specific curriculum. The Pennsylvania Study administered examinations in 1928, 1930, and 1932.
The Pennsylvania Study culminated in the report, The Student and His Knowledge (1938) by William Learned and Ben Woods who directed the study.
To those who believed that IQ and learned knowledge predicted success, the Pennsylvania Study proved that testing would improve education. It also proved to these same people that objective tests were better predictors of college success than high school transcripts.
The results of the Pennsylvania Study showed that there were considerable differences among students in the same institution and among students at all institutions. However, the specific results were of less importance than the implications for the uses of testing that came from the study.
There were a number of implications from the Pennsylvania Study for the uses of testing.
- It showed objective tests could be administered on a massive scale.
- It promoted the use of objective, multiple-choice tests and grading by machines not subjective people.
- It indicated that testing would help colleges identify those students who would benefit from higher education.
- It implied that through testing colleges could best evaluate a student's potential, assess his current ability, and place him in appropriate courses in college so that the student would receive maximum educational opportunities.
