2200 BC

Chinese emperors set up civil service exams

1115 BC

Formal examinations were used for candidates of public office in China

1219

University of Bologna employed oral & written law examinations

1400s

Louvain University used oral exams to place students in the following categories:  Honors, Satisfactory, Charity Passes, and Failures

1500s

During the late 1500s, Jesuits (the Catholic order founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola) uniformly adopted written tests for student placement and evaluation

~1800

Written examinations were commonly replacing oral exams because of questions of fairness

1809

Gross (1777-18550 developed a theory concerning errors in observations

1845

Schools begin testing students in a uniform way: oral examinations were state-of-the-art.  Boston was the first district to use short-answer tests throughout its schools

1869

Galton (1822-1911) published Classification of Men According to Their Natural Gifts, which stimulated the study of mental inheritance and individual differences; he is considered the founder of individual psychology

1874

Portland, Maine began standardized testing, based on a citywide curriculum and a test to measure whether students successfully learned it

1879

Wundt (1832-1920) founded the first psychological laboratory in Leipzig, Germany

1888

Cattell (1860-1944) opened a testing laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania; helped to establish the foundations of mental measurement in the USA

~1900

The College Entrance Examination Board (newly organized) administered essay exams in rhetoric, Greek, and other pre-school curriculum basics to divide students among universities [achieving a better fit between prep-schools & Ivy League]

1904

Pearson (1857-1936) formulated the theory of correlation

1904

Spearman (1863-1936) introduced a two-factor theory of intelligence that posited a general factor (g) and specific factors (s)

1905

Binet (1857-1911) and Simon (1873-1961) developed a useful intelligence test for screening school children 

1906

E. L. Thorndike (1874-1949) studied animal intelligence, formulated laws of learning, and developed principles of test construction

1909

Goddard (1866-1957) translated the Binet-Simon Scale from French into English

1915

American Educational Research Association founded

1916         

Terman (1877-1956) published the Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale; with Merrill (1888-1978), in 1937 he issued a revision called the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale; other revisions were published in 1960 and 1972 

1917

Yerkes (1876-1956), with colleagues, published the Army Alpha and Army Beta tests, which were group-administered intelligence tests used for the assessment of military recruits in the USA

1923

Kelly (1884-1961), Ruch (1903-1982), and Terman (1877-1956) published the Stanford Achievement Test

1920s

The College Board began investigating the uses of MC items in college entrance exams

1926

First administration of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, designed by Brigham, professor of Psychology at Princeton

1933

Thurstone (1887-1955) proposed a multiple factor analytic approach to the study of human abilities

1933

Tiegs (1891-1970) and Clark (1895-1964) published the Progressive Achievement Tests, later renamed the California Achievement Tests

1933

Harvard University, through the efforts of President Conant and his assistant Chauncey, used the SAT for their scholarship program

1936

Lindquist (1901-1978), with colleagues, published the Iowa Every-Pupil Tests of Basic Skills, later renamed the Iowa Test of Basic Skills

1930s

By the late 1930s, MC tests replaced most of the College Board’s essay tests

1937

Bender (1897-1987) published the Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test

1937

National Council on Measurement in Education founded

1938

Buros (1905-1978) published the first Mental Measurements Yearbook

1939

Wechsler (1896-1981) published the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale; revisions were issued in 1955 and 1981 under the titles Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale--Revised

1948

ETS was established and could process 4,000 tests a day. Today, they can score 64,000 forms a day

1949

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children was published; a revision was issued in 1974 under the titles Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Revised

1950s

Lindquist, at the University of Iowa, led the development of the optical scanner

1959

Guilford (1897- ) proposed a Structure of Intellect model of intelligence based on factor analytic methods

1969

National Assessment of Educational Progress initiated, testing samples of students aged 9, 13, and 17 years

1975

U.S. Public Law 94-142 passed, proclaiming the right to equal education for all handicapped children

1979

Judge Peckham in California ruled in Larry P. v. Wilson Riles that intelligence tests used for the assessment of Black children for classes for the educable mentally retarded are culturally biased.

1980

Judge Grady in Illinois ruled in Parents in Action on Special Education v. Joseph P. Hannon that intelligence tests are not racially or culturally biased and do not discriminate against Black children

1986

R. L. Thorndike (1910-  ), Hagen (1915-  ), and Sattler (1931-  ) published the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale: Fourth Edition, in which a point-scale format replace the age-scale format of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale: Form L-M.

2000

A federal district court upheld the Texas graduation test in GI Forum v. Texas Education Agency. The court held "While the [graduation test] does adversely affect minority students in significant numbers, the [state] has demonstrated an educational necessity for the test, and the Plaintiffs have failed to identify equally effective alternatives…. The [state] has provided adequate notice of the consequences of the exam and has ensured that the exam is strongly correlated to material actually taught in the classroom. In addition, the test is valid and in keeping with current educational norms. Finally, the test does not perpetuate prior educational discrimination…. Instead, the test seeks to identify inequities and to address them" (Phillips, 2000).