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Everett Franklin Lindquist (1901–1978) was a professor of education at the University of Iowa. His contributions to the field of educational testing are significant and still evident today.

Career

Lindquist joined the University of Iowa in 1925 as a research assistant. He received his Ph. D. in 1927 and was a member of the Iowa faculty until retirement in 1969.

Educational Testing

Desiring to create an academic competition for Iowa students, he developed a set of tests in 1929. These evolved into the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, an exam for elementary and middle school students, as well as the Iowa Tests of Educational Development for high schoolers. Despite their name, they are used nationwide, especially since the enactment of No Child Left Behind legislation. Due to their success, he founded the not-for-profit Measurement Research Center on the Iowa campus to score these tests, which was later acquired by Westinghouse, NCS, and its present owner, Pearson plc.

In 1959, he introduced the ACT, an examination to test students on practical knowledge rather than cognitive reasoning examined on the SAT. The ACT is still in widespread use today, and is headquartered in Lindquist's hometown, Iowa City, Iowa. Although it is now administered by the College Board, the competing organization to ACT, Lindquist developed the first National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Tests.

Lindquist was on the committee that developed the GED, which evolved during World War II as a way to grant academic credit to servicemen.

Testing technology

As a result of the fast-growing ITBS tests, he developed an optical mark sense scoring machine to replace the IBM 805 machine. Not only did it not require special paper, it was faster and less expensive, and allowed for usage of general #2 pencils. Although it was formed in association with his colleagues at the University of Iowa, Lindquist is generally credited with this development; he is said to have come up with the idea by examining a dismantled mimeograph machine.

Publications

His 1940 book, "Statistical Analysis in Educational Research", laid the groundwork for the need to interpret testing data in smaller settings using accessible means. He was the editor of the first edition of the then definitive work, Educational Measurement (1951) and contributed his own chapter outlining the problems and issues facing his field. These issues are still of great importance today. A second influential book, "Design and Analysis of Experiments in Psychology and Education" (1953), expounded on the ideas mentioned in his first book, cementing his authority as an expert on educational research.

[edit Legacy

The Lindquist Center, home to the School of Education, is currently on the University of Iowa campus and was named in his honor. Additionally, the Lindquist Building on the ACT campus in Iowa City also exists in his honor.

Ironically, although many classes now teach to his tests and ACT preparation is a multimillion dollar industry, Lindquist discouraged teaching to the test - in fact, due to this problem, his competitions ended in the late 1930s.