Elgin, CatherineStein, Zachary2014-11-142014-112014-10-222014Stein, Zachary. 2014. Tipping the Scales: Social Justice and Educational Measurement. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Education.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:13383548In this work I address foundational concerns at the interface of educational measurement and social justice. Following John Rawls’s philosophical methods, I build and justify an ethical framework for guiding practices involving educational measurement. This framework demonstrates that educational measurement is critical to insuring, or inhibiting, just educational arrangements. It also clarifies a principled distinction between efficiency-oriented testing and justice-oriented testing. In order to explore the feasibility and utility of this proposed framework, I employ it to analyze several historical case studies that exemplify the ethical issues related to testing: (1) the widespread use of IQ-style testing in schools during the early decades of the 20th century; (2) the founding of the Educational Testing Service; and (3) the recent history of test-based accountability associated with No Child Left Behind. I conclude with a set of speculative design principles and arguments in favor of radically democratic school reforms, which address how the future of testing might be shaped to ensure justice for all.application/pdfenEducation, Philosophy ofEducation, Tests and MeasurementsEducation, Educational PsychologyThesis or Dissertation2014-11-14