EXAMINATIONS IN UNITED STATES Examinations in the schools and universities of the United States have developed in much the same way as in European edu cational systems. They have not been as numerous as in Britain, and there are fewer examinations conducted by outside or extra mural examiners. Very early many universities began to admit students without examination, provided that they had graduated from an accredited high school, and this is now the common policy of most State universities Many universities, however, still insist upon examinations. In addition to examinations conducted by the schools themselves, there are those given by many special examin ing boards, such as State, city and county boards of examiners for certifying teachers, the College Entrance board and Civil Service commissions.
The three methods of examination have usually been the writ ten examination, the oral examination and more rarely the prac tical test. The last two are not very common, and the oral exami nation usually consists of random questions put by the examiners, who then register a total impression of the candidate. The written examination, therefore, is the most important method. Until recently this has consisted of written answers in the essay form to more or less general questions set by the examiner. The value attached to each question is subjectively determined by the exam iner, and his scoring of the answers is based upon the general opinion of their worth. This subjectivity of the usual examina tion has been severely criticized by many educators. The same paper scored by many teachers will receive marks scattered all the way from very low to very high. The same examiner will mark differently at different times.
During the period of criticism of the old-type examination, the standard educational test and the intelligence test were being de veloped. In this connection there grew up a technique of con structing questions, evaluating them and standardizing the total test. The construction of an examination in a school subject for nation-wide use (generally called a standardized educational test) is now quite a technical matter. The effect of this was immediately felt in the ordinary examination and there is now the so-called new-type or objective examination, which calls for a specific re sponse to an item, this response being made by underlining, check ing or writing a word or at most a phrase. In an old-type examina tion the candidate might, for example, be asked to write an essay in answer to the question, "Describe the secretion of gastric juice." In the new-type examination (examples taken from D. G. Pater son, Preparation and Use of New-Type Examinations, Yonkers 1925) his knowledge about gastric juice would be tested by his response to short items, sometimes containing both true and false information, sometimes incomplete. Such statements may take several forms, as will be illustrated by examples from different subjects: Analogy: Gastric juice is to the stomach as (saliva, adrenin, tears, bile) is to the lachrymal glands.
Completion: The part of a circle included between two—and an— is called a sector.
Recognition: Planets move around the sun in orbits that are circular, elliptical, hyperbolic, cylindrical.
True-False: The chief crop in Ohio is tobacco.
There are many different varieties and combinations of such forms, and those quoted above must be considered only as sam ples. These new-type examinations are now being widely used in all types of schools.
B. D. Wood describes such examinations at the university level and C. Russell shows in detail how school-teachers can construct such examinations in all subjects in the elementary school. He goes further and suggests how they may be used as effective teach ing devices. None of these authorities advises the absolute aban donment of the old-type essay examination, but all of them believe it to be insufficient for the accurate examination of the pupil. All of them emphasize the necessity for a careful construction of the new-type examination, and they maintain that it can be made to measure the pupil's ability to reason. They deny that it merely tests the memory of the pupil.
These new-type examinations are now being used by such exam ining bodies as the College Entrance Examination board and the board of examiners of the New York city board of education, and by many civil service commissions, both State and municipal. In Public Personnel Studies, a journal issued by the Bureau of Public Personnel Administration, Institute for Government Research at Washington, suggested examinations for a great many civil service positions have been published. Almost all of these examinations are of the new type.
(R. Pi.)