Stanford Achievement Test: First unified achievement battery

About the Stanford Achievement Test

By the early 1920s American schools were using a confusing assortment of independent achievement tests - separate tests for reading, separate for arithmetic, separate for spelling, each with its own scoring scale and norms. The Stanford Achievement Test was the first attempt to build a single integrated battery covering all the basic school subjects with uniform scoring.

The Stanford battery had nine subtests: Paragraph Meaning (reading comprehension), Word Meaning (vocabulary), Dictation (spelling), Language Usage (grammar), Arithmetic Computation, Arithmetic Reasoning, History and Civics, Geography, and Scientific Information. Each subtest produced a grade-equivalent score and a percentile rank. Children could be compared across subjects to identify strengths and weaknesses.

The Stanford Achievement Test was widely used in US schools through the 1950s. The Kelley/Ruch/Terman framework directly shaped Lindquist's Iowa Tests (1935), the California Achievement Test (1934), and the Metropolitan Achievement Tests (1932-present). The 'unified achievement battery' model that the Stanford originated is still the dominant form of US school testing today.

The 9 subtests

Take the interactive subset

Sample items at grade 6 difficulty (1923 Form B).

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Source

All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:

Kelley, T. L., Ruch, G. M. & Terman, L. M. (1923). Stanford Achievement Test. Yonkers-on-Hudson, NY: World Book Company.

Public domain. The Stanford trio was at the time the most authoritative educational psychology group in the United States. Terman was already famous for the Stanford-Binet (1916); Kelley was developing the modern statistical theory of educational measurement; Ruch was the practical test-development specialist.