Luther Spoehr: Review of William J. Reese's “Testing Wars in the Public Schools: A Forgotten History” (Harvard University Press, 2013.)

When the examiners for the Boston School Committee visited the city’s public schools at the end of the 1845 school year, they brought along a surprise.  Instead of the standard public questioning, recitation, and exhibitions, students were to take written examinations.  This development, says William Reese, was as revolutionary as it was unexpected.  Linked as it was to other reforms advocated by Horace Mann, Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, and his allies in Boston, it was instrumental in establishing the template for public schooling across the country that still exists today.