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Home/Historical IQ Tests/Iowa Tests 1935
Reference entry · 1935 · University of Iowa13 cited sources

Iowa Every-Pupil Tests of Basic Skills: from a Brain Derby to a national battery.

First given in 1935 to Iowa pupils in grades six through eight, the battery grew out of a 1929 high-school scholarship contest and became the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills — today's Iowa Assessments.1,2,3 To score it at scale, its director later invented the first successful optical mark scanner.7,9

Hand-score, then scan →Cite this page
AT A GLANCE
Original nameIowa Every-Pupil Tests of Basic Skills 2
First given1935 1,2
AuthorsE. F. Lindquist, H. Greene, E. Horn, M. McBroom, H. Spitzer 3
InstitutionState University of Iowa 4
Original grades6–8; extended to 3–5 in 1940 4
TypeAchievement battery, not an intelligence test 2
RenamedIowa Tests of Basic Skills (1955); now Iowa Assessments 1,2
ScoringBy teachers locally at first; by machine from the 1950s 4,7
1 · ORIGINS

The "Brain Derby" that turned into a testing program

1929 · Iowa Academic Meethigh school

Under Professor Thomas Kirby, Lindquist built a statewide scholastic competition for Iowa high schools, known popularly as the "Brain Derby."4 Its first-year sections covered subjects such as grammar, literature, history, algebra and geometry.5 Lindquist and colleagues soon concluded the tests could serve guidance and the evaluation of instruction, not just competition.4

1935 · Basic Skills batterygrades 6–8

The Iowa Every-Pupil Tests of Basic Skills were designed and first given in 1935 by Lindquist with Harry Greene, Ernest Horn, Maude McBroom and Herbert Spitzer, as a tool for improving instruction.3 Lindquist intended the program to be "diagnostic in character" — able to show whether a district's curriculum was working.5

Note on dates: one University of Iowa college page gives 1945 for the ITBS; the college's own history timeline, the University of Iowa Press biography and the SAGE encyclopedia all give 1935.1,2,4 A University of Iowa Press account also describes a broader Every-Pupil Achievement program running 1931–1942 alongside it.4

2 · WHAT WAS TESTED

Reading, language, study skills and arithmetic

Like the Stanford Achievement Test before it, the battery spanned the basic curriculum.5 Surviving booklets in the Cornell University archive show how the lettered tests were organized in the late 1930s and early 1940s.6

Test BVocabulary · Basic Study SkillsA 1936 booklet for grades 6–8.6
Test BWork-Study SkillsForm N, 1942, for grades 5–9.6
Test CBasic Language SkillsForm O, 1943, for grades 5–9.6
—Reading and arithmeticNamed among the battery's core areas alongside language and study skills.5

The exact 1935 test lettering is not confirmed by the sources consulted; the rows above follow dated booklets from 1936–1943.

3 · SCORING, REPORTING AND SPREAD

Graded by teachers, compared statewide, then sold nationally

30,000Iowa pupils in four yearsTested within the first four years of the program.5
1940Extended to grades 3–5After immediate statewide success.4
1940Houghton Mifflin contractThe university testing bureau signed with the publisher.5
by 1940Bought nationwideSchool districts across the country were purchasing the tests.11

Each district received a confidential report ranking its pupils against the mean of a statewide sample.5 Until the 1942 high-school battery centralized scoring in Iowa City, teachers graded the tests at their own schools and sent results in.4 Kansas City, Missouri and South Carolina were among early buyers outside Iowa.5

4 · THE SCORING MACHINE

How the Iowa program changed test scoring everywhere

1932–35
IBM's optical experimentsRichard Warren at IBM filed patents for optical mark sensing; they did not become the standard.9
1930s
IBM 805The standard machine sensed the electrical conductivity of graphite pencil marks with wire brushes.9
early 1950s
Iowa's high-speed scorerDeveloped at Iowa Testing Programs to score the ITBS and ITED; Lindquist was the principal inventor.7
1953
Measurement Research CenterThe university spun the equipment and scoring operation into a wholly-owned corporation.7
1955 / 1962
US Patent 3,050,248Lindquist's optical mark scanner, filed 1955 and granted 1962 — the first successful one.9
1968
Sold to WestinghouseThe scoring operation later passed to NCS and then Pearson.1
5 · LEGACY

Achievement, not aptitude

Iowa Tests of Educational Development1942
High-school battery emphasizing general intellectual skills, scaled for comparable scores and scored centrally.4
GED1940s
Lindquist used the ITED to help build the Armed Forces Tests of General Educational Development.10
ACT1959
Lindquist argued college entrance tests should measure achievement, not aptitude; the first ACT reached 75,406 students on 7 November 1959.10
Iowa Assessmentstoday
The renamed battery is still offered to schools by the University of Iowa College of Education.3
6 · TRY IT

Six items in the style of the upper-grade battery

01VOCABULARY
A "journey" is a —
02VOCABULARY
"Enormous" means —
03ARITHMETIC
384 + 297 =
04ARITHMETIC
A class of 28 splits into teams of 4. How many teams?
05LANGUAGE
Which is spelled correctly?
06WORK-STUDY
To find the meaning of a word, you would look in —
Items written for this page, not reproduced from any Iowa form.
In the 1930s teachers scored the booklets at their own schools, item by item.
1
2
3
4
5
6
Illustrative only: the animation shows the idea of optical mark reading, not the mechanics of Lindquist's machine. No grade equivalents are computed.
7 · REFERENCES

Sources cited on this page

  1. [1]University of Iowa College of Education. College history (timeline).education.uiowa.edu
  2. [2]Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. In N. J. Salkind (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Measurement and Statistics (2007). SAGE.sk.sagepub.com
  3. [3]Wikipedia contributors. Iowa Assessments (tertiary overview; accessed 29 Sept 2026).en.wikipedia.org
  4. [4]Lindquist, Everett Franklin. Biographical Dictionary of Iowa. University of Iowa Press.uipress.lib.uiowa.edu
  5. [5]Made to measure (1999, June). Education Week (drawing on Peterson, 1983).edweek.org
  6. [6]Cornell University Library, Rare and Manuscript Collections — Iowa Every-Pupil Tests of Basic Skills booklets, 1936–1943 (Box 47).archives.library.cornell.edu
  7. [7]University of Iowa College of Education. Iowa Measurement Research Foundation: A history.education.uiowa.edu
  8. [8]Watters, A. (2015). Multiple choice and testing machines: A history. The History of the Future of Education.medium.com
  9. [9]Optical mark recognition — technical background (US Patents 2,150,256; 2,010,653; 3,050,248).darayjg.wordpress.com
  10. [10]Wikipedia contributors. ACT (for-profit organization) (accessed 29 Sept 2026).en.wikipedia.org
  11. [11]Iowa PBS. Standardized testing begins in Iowa (citing M. A. Bonney, "All those tests!," The Goldfinch, 1981).iowapbs.org
  12. [12]Review of Peterson, J. J., The Iowa Testing Programs: The First Fifty Years. The Annals of Iowa, 49(7), 624–625 (1989).doi:10.17077/0003-4827.9343
  13. [13]University of Iowa Center for Advancement. Distinguished Alumni Award profile: Dr. E. F. Lindquist.foriowa.org

Standard book-length history: Peterson, J. J. (1983). The Iowa Testing Programs: The First Fifty Years. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. ISBN 0-87745-121-4. Several facts above reach us through sources that cite it.5,12

HOW TO CITE THIS PAGE
What's Your IQ. (2026). Iowa Every-Pupil Tests of Basic Skills (1935). In Historical IQ Tests Archive. Retrieved September 29, 2026, from /en/historical-iq-tests/iowa-tests-early-1935
EDITORIAL RECORD
First published2026
Last reviewed29 September 2026
Sources13 cited, plus Peterson (1983)
Canonical URLwhats-your-iq.com/en/historical-iq-tests/iowa-tests-early-1935
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Part of the Historical IQ Tests Archive. Editorial content under CC BY-SA 4.0. No items from any Iowa form are reproduced; current Iowa Assessments are copyrighted.
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