Racism and Standardized Testing Intertwined

Standardized testing rooted in eugenics of the early 20th Century... and their seeming mathematical precision is an illusion that persists despite decades of evidence to the contrary

Charles Blow’s NYTimes column, Demanding that Ketanji Brown Jackson Show Her Papers, describes Tucker Carlson’s vicious and groundless attack on the Supreme Court nominees credentials. Among the key data points Carlson sought was Ms. Brown’s LSAT scores. As Charles Blow reports:

Tucker Carlson last week demanded that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Black woman who is President Biden’s nominee for the Supreme Court, prove that she is qualified. He demanded that she show her papers.

As Carlson said on Fox News, “It might be time for Joe Biden to let us know what Ketanji Brown Jackson’s LSAT score was. How did she do on the LSATs? … It would seem like Americans in a democracy have a right to know.”

And Charles Blow notes that this was not the first African American whose qualifications were questioned. Former President Trump questioned President Obama’s birth certificate, his academic resume, his authorship of the best-selling books he wrote, and his academic records— his SAT scores and transcripts.

The fact that so-called conservatives like Mr. Carlson and the former President base their questions on standardized test scores is no surprise, for the roots of their critiques, like the roots of standardized tests, are grounded in eugenics and the racism associated with that discredited “science”. As reported by NEA Today contributors John Rosales and Tim Walker the roots of today’s coin-of-the-realm standardized tests, the SATS and AP tests, go back to concern of social scientists in the 1920s, many of them White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, about “…the infiltration of non-whites into the nation’s public schools.” The NEA article offers this history:

In his 1923 book, A Study of American Intelligence, psychologist and eugenicist Carl Brigham wrote that African-Americans were on the low end of the racial, ethnic, and/or cultural spectrum. Testing, he believed, showed the superiority of “the Nordic race group” and warned of the “promiscuous intermingling” of new immigrants in the American gene pool.

Furthermore, the education system he argued was in decline and "will proceed with an accelerating rate as the racial mixture becomes more and more extensive."

Brigham had helped to develop aptitude tests for the U.S. Army during World War I and – commissioned by the College Board - was influential in the development of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). At the time, he and other social scientists considered the SAT a new psychological test and a supplement to existing college board exams. 

The SAT debuted in 1926, joined by the ACT (American College Testing) in the 1950s. By the 21st century, the SAT and ACT were just part of a barrage 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.

Brigham also pioneered the Advanced Placement examinations. These marathon four-hour Advanced Placement (AP) examinations—which some universities accept for students who want to opt out of introductory college-level classes—are widespread across the country: In 2019, more than 1.24 million public high school students took an AP exam. 

Sadly, Mr. Brigham’s views were widely held in that era and the ability of standardized tests to sort students cheaply and with seeming mathematical precision led to their widespread adoption in public education in the years that followed despite the tests’ explicit roots in eugenics. As the NEA article notes:

In his essay “The Racist Origins of the SAT,” Gil Troy calls Brigham a “Pilgrim-pedigreed, eugenics-blinded bigot.” Eugenics is often defined as the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. It was developed by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race. Only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis in World War II was the theory dismissed.

 “All-American decency and idealism coexisted uncomfortably with these scientists’ equally American racism and closemindedness,” Troy writes.

Binet, Terman, and Brigham stood at the intersection of powerful intellectual, ideological, and political trends a century ago when the Age of Science and standardization began, according to Troy.

“In (those) consensus-seeking times, scientists became obsessed with deviations and handicaps, both physical and intellectual,” Troy states. “And many social scientists, misapplying Charles Darwin’s evolving evolutionary science, and eugenics’ pseudo-science, worried about maintaining white purity.”

The history of standardized testing is inescapable and the continued use of standardized tests to define “merit” persists, as witnessed by Tucker Carlson’s insistence that scores on a three-hour-long LSAT are somehow a more valid indication of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s fitness for the Supreme Court than her stellar accomplishments since completing graduate school.

It’s been more than a century since the theories of Binet, Terman, and Brigham took hold of the public’s mindset on “measuring” learning. The fact that the tests they devised reinforced the status quo, were cheap to administer, and yielded seemingly precise results makes it difficult to shake the mindset that high test scores are objective evidence of “merit”. Until the public realizes that the efficiency of using tests to sort and select student is less important that providing equal opportunities for all children to progress in school the status quo will prevail.