Improving the Tools

In which of the following centuries was the piece of sculpture shown above most probably produced?

(A) The fifth century B.C. (B) The fourteenth century A.D. (C) The sixteenth century A.D. (D) The eighteenth century A.D. (E) The twentieth century A.D.

Picking the right answer* to this question forces a student to recognize and choose among the idealized forms of ancient Greece, the saintly statues of medieval Christianity, the heroic proportions of a Michelangelo, the classical revival, and the textured boldness of contemporary art. No longer do multiple-choice tests offer nonsensical or mildly deceptive wrong answers, or reward fact fanciers with high scores. The best of the new multiple-choice exams test logic, not memory, and conceptual understanding rather than rote learning. And the exam's old reputation for superficiality is fading.

Peculiar Property. Manufacturing questions that are subtly discriminating is the touchy job of the nonprofit Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J. Founded in 1947, mammoth E.T.S. now branches out from its 340 rural acres to affect the lives of students across the U.S. Last year more than 4,000,000 people took more than 7,000,000 of its tests. Among them: the fearsome College Entrance Board's, Graduate Record Exams, and specialized brain twisters for prospective lawyers, doctors, businessmen, teachers, Peace Corps volunteers, architects, insurance underwriters. This month E.T.S. starts a new program, a pilot project for first-graders in 25 New York City public schools that hopefully will spot low achievers with high potential.

Most of the work at E.T.S. is done by professional experts aided by hundreds of teachers who meet in drafting committees. Each new question undergoes a trial run in a current test; if it proves too hard, too easy or too ambiguous, it is revised or dropped. So rigorous is the selection process that only one question in ten reaches an exam in its original form. For example, when students were asked to decide whether "Alpha-particle emission with long half lives is a property peculiar to a) compounds, b) heterogeneous matter, c) the heavier elements, d) the lighter elements or e) uranium," many students interpreted "peculiar" as meaning "strange or unusual." The question (answer: c) the heavier elements) was clarified by replacing "peculiar" with the phrase "found only in . . ."

Foxy Problems. Many a schoolman argues that essay exams still measure knowledge--not to mention self-expression--better than multiple-choice tests, especially in English. But E.T.S. President Henry Chauncey, 59, a onetime associate dean at Harvard who has headed the organization since its birth, disputes even that contention. He argues that foxy problems involving sentence structure or correcting grammatical deficiencies are as good a test of writing ability as writing itself.

Significantly, the number of colleges requesting a sample composition from E.T.S.-tested students has dropped sharply in recent years because the objective test proved as reliable as the subjective essay. Besides, the multiple-choice exams can be graded on computers at the rate of two per second, which makes them the best practical tool for finding the best students amid the crush of U.S. mass education.

* (E) Young Woman, by Germany's Georg Kolbe (1877-1947).

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