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Missing the Mark: Intelligence Testing in Los Angeles Public Schools, 1922–32

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Judith R. Raftery
Judith R. Raftery*
Affiliation:
California State University, Chico
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Extract

This is a study of how Intelligence Quotient testing, which was always controversial, became a tool for one of the nation's most advanced and progressive school systems, the Los Angeles public schools. Rather than considering what advocates said about intelligence testing, this essay focuses on the actual testing in schools. It argues that teachers never completely accepted I.Q. tests as the unambiguous instruments their designers had claimed. Instead, teachers immediately detected the cultural biases in the tests, and administrators recognized that they did not provide the revolutionary, educational, or diagnostic tool that had been expected. This essay does not suggest that I.Q. testing played no role in “tracking.” What it does demonstrate is that the test generated far more confusion and frustration for teachers and administrators than historians have thought. Educators initially expected that the test would provide a clear-cut pattern for separating students by intelligence. When they discovered that the test was unreliable, many looked for alternatives. Ability grouping in Los Angeles public schools in the 1920s and early 1930s depended less on I.Q. testing than historians have led us to suppose.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , Spring 1988 , pp. 73 - 93
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 Cravens, Hamilton The Triumph of Evolution: American Scientists and the Heredity-Environment Controversy, 1900–1941 (Philadelphia, 1978), 249–50; John Dewey, “Mediocrity and Individuality,” New Republic, 6 Dec. 1922, 35; Walter Lippmann, “A Future for the Tests,” New Republic, 29 Nov. 1922, 10. For a discussion of I.Q. testing by teachers and administrators in England, see Gillian Sutherland, “Measuring Intelligence: English Local Education Authorities and Mental Testing, 1919–1939,” in The Meritocratic Intellect: Studies in the History of Education Research, ed. J. V. Smith and D. Hamilton (Aberdeen, Scotland, 1980), 79–95. Mental testing challenged English concepts of class, rather than race, at a time when England had few nonwhite residents.Google Scholar

2 Tyack, David B. The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), 208–16; Tyack uses examples from a few testing programs, but he relies on the views of the schools’ officials and not on those of classroom teachers. Clarence J. Karier, “Testing for Order and Control in the Corporate Liberal State,” in Clarence J. Karier, Paul C. Violas, and Joel Spring, Roots of Crisis: American Education in the Twentieth Century (Chicago, 1973), 108–37; Karier relies on the work of well-known psychologists Lewis Terman, Edward R. Thorndike, Henry H. Goddard, among others, but does not consider what took place in the classroom. Paula Fass, “The IQ: A Cultural and Historical Framework,” American Journal of Education 88(Aug. 1980):431–58; Fass criticizes I.Q. testing on a broad level but does not investigate a particular program. Gilbert Gonzales, “The System of Public Education and Its Function within Chicano Communities, 1920–1931” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1974); Gonzales draws different conclusions from many of the sources. Richardo Romo, East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio (Austin, Tex., 1983), 137; Romo writes that I.Q. tests were “generally administered in English to Mexican children,” but he neglects to add that often the testers administered tests in Spanish.Google Scholar

3 A study of the New York City schools, by Leila Zenderland, presents complementary information. Leila Zenderland, “Psychological Expertise and Public Education: The Battle over Intelligence Testing in New York City, 1910–1915” (Paper presented at the Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, April 1985).Google Scholar

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15 Los Angeles Board of Education, Reports of the Board of Education, 1900–1901, 103.Google Scholar

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17 Ibid., 47.Google Scholar

18 Bulletin, 15 June 1925, 8.Google Scholar

19 Ibid. Rudolph Pintner authored several intelligence and performance tests, but in 1924 Raybold most likely administered the standard Pintner-Cunningham. Pintner had used his Pinter Non-language Group Test on foreign children and published the results in 1922. Pintner and Ruth Keller, “Intelligence Test of Foreign Children,” Journal of Educational Psychology 13(Apr. 1922):214–22. In 1930 he published the Pintner Non-language Primary Mental Tests for use on deaf children in kindergarten through second grade with directions administered in pantomime, and he established the test's validity by correlations with the Stanford-Binet and the Pintner-Cunningham. Rudolph Pintner, Non-language Primary Mental Tests (New York, 1930).Google Scholar

20 Raybold expressed surprise that the San Fernando students understood more English than the counselors imagined, and yet, instead of taking this new-found information and using it in a constructive manner, the testers misinterpreted it. The children probably were what educators now call “limited English speakers,” which means that they had an English vocabulary of about one hundred words.Google Scholar

21 Bulletin, 2 Oct. 1925, 12–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 In 1935 Hershel T. Manuel, professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas, published his findings on the “Spanish and English Editions of the Stanford-Binet in Relation to the Abilities of Mexican Children” in the university's Bulletin. Manuel's interest in school performances of children of Mexican heritage in Texas had made him sensitive to some of the difficulties the children had in the often hostile environment of public schools. Manuel and his staff, including George I. Sanchez, one of the first Mexican Americans to criticize the conclusions drawn from conventional testing, had rejected the two commonly used Spanish translations of the 1916 Stanford Revision because neither fit the needs of their subjects. They felt that their translation closely followed the English version, but they allowed for some changes. Because the two languages were not always parallel, some of the idioms differed, and their translation better fit the dialect used by Mexicans living in Texas. The Texas University staff administered the Spanish and English editions of the Stanford-Binet in 1931–32 to Spanish-speaking children in San Antonio. The findings reinforced the assumptions made by Los Angeles school people on the relationships among such factors as intelligence, language ability, socioeconomics, and years spent in school. In most cases, the Spanish version yielded higher mental ages and intelligence quotients than did the English edition. In grades two to five, the average I.Q. was 82.5 on the Spanish edition and 80.5 on the English. After careful analysis, Manuel concluded that the lower scores represented a lack of training or experience. He speculated: “On account of their generally low cultural level and their retardation in school their experiences are greatly restricted. It is possible that this is reflected in such tests as the giving of differences between a president and a king and perhaps even in arranging the weights…. The parents of 10 out of 14 children in the fifth grade said that their children had never had toys such as blocks or puzzles.” Hershel T. Manuel, “Spanish and English Editions of the Stanford-Binet in Relation to the Abilities of Mexican Children,” University of Texas Bulletin, 22 Aug. 1935, 30.Google Scholar

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38 Bulletin, 12 Nov. 1923, 1–8; American blacks sometimes, but not always, surprised the examiners. In a 1924–25 Massachusetts report, black students scored higher than Portuguese children. As editor of American Ethnic Groups, Thomas Sowell noted that in Massachusetts schools with mixed ethnic populations of French-Canadians, Italian, Polish, and Portuguese, blacks had the highest percentage of I.Q. scores over 120. Thomas Sowell, ed., American Ethnic Groups (Washington, D.C., 1978), 207–8.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., Sept. 1931, 65–70.Google Scholar

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41 Some of the classes fitted blacks into subservient occupations; for example, no other high school except Jefferson offered vocational training to become a maid. For a comprehensive account of black school segregation see Hendrick, “Public Policy toward the Education of Non-White Minority Group Children in California,” and Bessie Averne McClenahan, The Changing Urban Neighborhood (Los Angeles, 1929), 92. Community groups pressured the board through their petitions; see Los Angeles Board of Education Minutes, 21 July 1921, 433. Also see, David Ment, “Patterns of Public School Segregation, 1900–1940: A Comparative Study of New York City, New Rochelle, and New Haven,” in Schools in Cities: Consensus and Conflict in American Education, ed. Ronald K. Goodenow and Diane Ravitch (New York, 1983), 67–110.Google Scholar

42 Bulletin, Jan. 1932, 65–70; Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census, vol. 3, part 1, Population, 266. The Japanese community had grown from just a few at the turn of the century to over 35,000 in 1930.Google Scholar

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44 Ibid., 27 Apr. 1925, 34–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Los Angeles Examiner, 27 May 1927.Google Scholar

46 U.S. Department of Interior, Office of Education, “The Education of Spanish Speaking Children in Five Southwestern States,” by Anne Reynolds, Bulletin 7 (Washington D.C., 1933), 46–47.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., 46–47. Reynolds may have been familiar with the work of educators at the University of Texas.Google Scholar

48 Tyack, One Best System, 164 180.Google Scholar

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50 Bulletin, 12 Nov. 1923, 2, 3.Google Scholar

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