Robert L. Green

The Impact of Standardized Testing on Minority Students

Testing has become an institution which affects the lives of Americans in a profound way. Early in their educational careers, children are sorted and categorized on the basis of standardized tests. As they advance toward graduation from high school, the tests become more and more life-determining. Decisions about higher education are reached with test scores as a major factor. Decisions about graduate and professional schools are based partly on test results. Tests are used to guide employment decisions and to determine professional advancement in certain careers. Testing is pervasive and powerful in its influence on modern life. Testing is also difficult to check and control even when its influence appears to be unfair and/or counter-productive to the welfare of those being tested. The negative aspects of testing procedures are especially apparent with respect to racial minorities, since tests can serve as a convenient tool for rationalizing discriminatory practices. Because of past discrimination in education, health, housing and all other aspects of American life, racial minorities, as a group, have not performed well onr standardized tests, when compared with their white counterparts. To the extent that this difference has

Some Effects of Deprivation on Intelligence, Achievement, and Cognitive Growth

Many assumptions have been made concerning the probable effects of extended periods of non-schooling. A typical assumption is that basic learning such as the attainment of verbal concepts, reading comprehension, and arithmetic reasoning can be acquired more readily in a formal school setting with a teacher trained in educational methodology. However, a review of the literature indicates that the above assumption, so often taken for granted, rarely has been empirically assessed. This lack of psychological research on the effects of non-schooling stems from the -national trend of universal school attendance.

The Effects of Resumed Schooling on the Measured Intelligence of Prince Edward County's Black Children

In the spring of 1959 one of the most unusual and debilitating events in the history of American public education occurred. To prevent desegregation of the public schools, officials of Prince Edward County, Virginia, closed these schools for a total of four years to their Countys children. While most of the white childrens families could afford the tuition to a segregated private school during this period of time, nearly 1700 Negro children lacked even this alternative. For the school year of 1963-1964, through the efforts of the United States Department of Justice and six Virginia educators, a private school system was at last made available to all the Countys children. Enrollment in this school system, the Prince Edward County Free School Association, included those black children still residing in the county as well as six of their white peers. The next fall (1964) regular public schools were reopened by court order.