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University Daily Kansan
Friday, May 3. 1963
High School, College Officials Discuss Testing Program
Pressure, worry, tension—the evils of testing were recently discussed at a one-day conference here at KU.
High school and college counselors and instructors branded scholarship and college entrance examinations as examples of today's high-pressure external testing program.
Brooke Collison, counselor at Washington High School, Bethel, said: "External testing programs are putting a great pressure on both students and teachers in high schools. The results aren't particularly useful to those who are working with the students in the schools."
External testing programs are those conducted by or for some organization outside the school's own testing program.
"THESE TESTS take too much time." Collison said.
But testing is here to stay. There will be more of it, and the results will be more fruitful, according to Paul Dressel, director of the office of institutional research at Michigan State University.
Admitting the evils of over-testing, the unfair comparisons often draw on the basis of test scores, and the pressures parents exert on schools to "coach for the tests," Dresser said:
"A democratic society requires that each individual have a maximum opportunity for maximum development. Testing can be useful in achieving this. We need better and more valid tests."
JAMES K. HITT, registrar and director of admissions at KU, noted
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He called "unfair" the reasoning by school administrators that because their students score higher than national norms, their schools provide better education.
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Dresser denied the validity of the argument that national testing programs are thrusting conformity on the nation's public schools.
"But the time is approaching when we shall need to know more than rank-in-graduating class for evaluating the applications of non-residents," he said.
throughout the nation," he said. "It isn't bad if schools are stimulated to upgrade the quality of their programs."
that under present admissions policies the University has little need of external testing programs. Its own placement examinations for new students give adequate information for counseling purposes.
BARBARA HUSTON
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"GREAT DIFFERENCES exist in the standards of public education
He said that at the university level motivated students seem to acquire good educations anywhere, and that unusual intellectual achievement by the students of any institution reflects a high caliber of students rather than any built-in superiority of the school's teaching program.
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