The work of measurement in education, using the term broadly enough to include the measurement of mental and physical ability as well as the measurement of subject-matter, bids fair to do more than any other single piece of work to place education on a scientific basis. Since the beginning of work along this line in this country, and its promotion under men like Thorndike, Ayres, Strayer, Judd, Courtis, and others, education has gone forward by leaps and bounds. No progressive educator can fail to appreciate the immense significance of this work. But every true educator before undertaking to measure a piece of school work should be zealous to ascertain that the right and desirable thing is being measured. This is the first essential in all testing, and especially in all efforts to formulate standard tests 'or scales. Tests used strictly for diagnostic purposes without any attempts to set standards, may, as they develop, be found to need a different guiding principle. This first essential has evidently been neglected in a recently proposed test of ability to place the decimal point'. This is the more surprising in view of the valuable work of the author in applying standard tests to public-school work. Before "constructing a series of tests" to test this ability, the author should have raised the question "How much work in decimals is needed to meet the actual conditions of business XWALTER S. MONROE, "Ability to Place the Decimal Point in Division," Elementary School 7ournal, December, 1917.
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