美国标准考试历史简介
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标准考试是美国大学招考的重要形式,在美国已有50多年的历史。近年来,越来越多的大学开始重视标准考试。最常见的标准考试有两种:美国大学入学考试(ACT)和学术能力评估考试(SAT)。下面,我们就来看看美国标准考试的形成过程。
Standardized tests have been a scourge1 of student life in America for more than 50 years, but it’s fair to say they’re more pressure?鄄packed and ubiquitous than ever before. The ACT(American College Test)and its counterpart, the SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test), have become one of the largest determining factors in the college?鄄admissions process, particularly for élite schools. Students in the U.S. are taking more standardized tests than ever before, and at ages long before college beckons.
The earliest record of standardized testing comes from China, where hopefuls for government jobs had to fill out examinations testing their knowledge of Confucian philosophy and poetry. In the Western world, examiners usually favored giving essays, a tradition stemming from the ancient Greeks’ affinity for2 the Socratic method. But as the Industrial Revolution (and the progressive movement of the early 1800s that followed) took school?鄄age kids out of the farms and factories and put them behind desks, standardized examinations emerged as an easy way to test large numbers of students quickly.
In 1905 French psychologist Alfred Binet began developing a standardized test of intelligence, work that would eventually be incorporated into a version of the modern IQ test, dubbed3 the Stanford?鄄Binet Intelligence Test. By World War I, standardized testing was standard practice: aptitude quizzes called Army Mental Tests were conducted to assign U.S. servicemen jobs during the war effort. But grading was at first done manually, an arduous task that undermined standardized testing’s goal of speedy mass assessment. It would take until 1936 to develop the first automatic test scanner, a rudimentary computer called the IBM 805. It used electrical current to detect marks made by special pencils on tests, giving rise to the now ubiquitous bubbling?鄄in of answers. (Modern optical scanners opt to use simple No. 2 pencils, as their darker lead is most scanner?鄄friendly.)
The SAT and the ACT are by far the most famous standardized tests today. The SAT came first, founded in 1926 as the Scholastic Aptitude Test by the College Board, a nonprofit group of universities and other educational organizations. The original test lasted 90 minutes and consisted of 315 questions testing knowledge of vocabulary and basic math and even including an early iteration4 of the famed fill?鄄in?鄄the?鄄blank analogies (e.g., blue:sky:::grass). The test grew and by 1930 assumed its now familiar form, with separate verbal and math tests. By the end of World War Ⅱ, the test was accepted by enough universities that it became a standard rite of passage for college?鄄bound high school seniors. It remained largely unchanged (save the occasional tweak) until 2005, when the analogies were done away with and a writing section was added. (That section is graded separately from the verbal test, boosting the elusive perfect SAT score from 1600 to 2400.)
In 1959 an education professor at the University of Iowa named Everett Franklin Lindquist (who later pioneered the first generation of optical scanners and the development of the GED test) developed the ACT as a competitor to the SAT. Originally an acronym for American College Testing, the exam included a section that guided students toward a course of study by asking questions about their interests. In addition to math, reading and English skills, the ACT assesses students on their knowledge of scientific facts and principles; the test is scored on a scale of 0 to 36. Both the ACT and the SAT have found a niche5: the ACT is more commonly accepted in the Midwest and South, while schools on the coasts show a preference for the SAT. Students show a propensity6 for one test or the other: the SAT is geared toward testing logic, while the ACT is considered more a test of accumulated knowledge. One thing the tests have in common: their names no longer have any official meaning. Any pretence7 of the letters being acronyms was dropped decades ago. They’re now simply the ACT and SAT.
In the 21st century, however, the SAT and the ACT are just part of a gauntlet8 of tests students may face before reaching college. The College Board also offers SAT Ⅱ tests, designed for individual subjects ranging from biology to geography. The marathon four?鄄hour Advanced Placement examinations ― which some universities accept for students who want to opt out of introductory college?鄄level classes ― remain popular: nearly 350,000 took the U.S. history AP test in the year 2008, the most popular subject test offered. There’s also the PSAT, taken in the junior year as preparation for the full?鄄blown SAT and as an assessment for the coveted National Merit Scholarships. And we’ve still only covered high school ― one of the main criticisms of President George W. Bush’s 2001 No Child Left Behind education reform was its expansion of state?鄄mandated standardized testing as means of assessing school performance. Now most students are tested each year of grade school as well. That means that by the time they graduate to college―where the essay, the experiment and the case study still rule―the reprieve9 from bubble?鄄filling and time limits is a welcome one indeed.
注释:
1) scourge n. 比喻造成灾难的人或事物
2) affinity for sth. 强烈喜爱(某人或某事物)
3) dub v.给(某人或某物)起绰号,起外号
4) iteration n. 重复,反复;重复的事(话)
5) niche n. 壁龛;比喻适合的或舒适的位置、地方、职业等
6) propensity n. 倾向,习性
7) pretence of sth. 有……的假象,假象
8) gauntlet n. 铁手套;擂台
9) reprieve n. (死刑)缓期执行;比喻暂时缓解(某人或
某事物)的危险、困难等