Bond's cautions also were not heeded by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray when they wrote the best-selling The Bell Curve in 1994. Many reviewers within the academic and lay communities have criticized the thinly veiled racism and the voluminous but misleading use of data found in the book. These tendencies were reminiscent of the eugenic advocates' interpretation of tests in the 1920s. Furthermore, Murray and Herrnstein rewrote history when they claimed that the eugenic use of tests was not used to draw any negative conclusions about immigrant groups in the country and played no role in the immigration hearings of 1924. It has been this kind of denial of history that makes it all the more important to re-examine how standardized tests are being used in educational reform today.
Standardized tests can provide important diagnostic information for educators.
Achieving standards of academic excellence through ongoing assessment of student work is a vital component of a young person's learning. However, too often, standards and assessment have become synonymous with top-down, externally mandated tests. Learning becomes reduced to test preparation and test taking. Test scores are often seen as proxies for intelligence or as the most important indicators of what students are learning. Quick judgments and quick fixes are the products of this kind of reform.