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Mental Testing and the Expansion of Educational Opportunity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Michael Ackerman
Michael Ackerman*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
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Extract

Ever since Arthur Jensen touched off the so-called “IQ controversy” with his famous 1969 article in the Harvard Educational Review, most spokesmen for the educational aspirations of minorities and the lower classes have been highly critical of mental testing. Jensen's determination that 80 percent of the variability in IQ scores was due to innate, genetic factors and his suggestion that little could be done to increase a person's IQ substantially raised fears that support for compensatory education programs, such as Head Start, would be undermined. Consequently, critics began to challenge the assumptions of the testing profession and to explore the harmful effects of testing in the schools, concluding that these instruments restricted the educational opportunities of minority and underprivileged students.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , Fall 1995 , pp. 279 - 300
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by the History of Education Society 

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References

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