Historia de la Educación (Oct 2016)
Standardized assessment system in Chile: share of Mario Leyton Soto and Erika Himmel König
Abstract
Educational evaluation, as the science of education, began to be developed and applied in Chile only starting from the sixties of the last century. Indeed, several Chilean educators were to his PhD to United States of America in these areas; among them are Mario Leyton and Erika Himmel, who specialized in curriculum and evaluation, through the approaches of Tyler and Bloom. Therefore, both were actively involved in the introduction into the country of two measurement systems: (1) selection for admission to the University, creating a standardized test, the academic aptitude test –paa– which was established from 1967 and remained until 2002 and from 2003 to date was changed to the university selection test –psu–; initially the paa contained only verbal and mathematical aptitude tests; knowledge tests were subsequently added specific (in mathematics, biology, physics, chemistry and Sciences social). (2) the measurement of achievements educational system school, both in basic education and medium from the 1970s with the called initially program of evaluation of educational achievement –per– and, subsequently, with the system of measurement of the quality of the teaching –simce–, which applies from 1988 until today, at the national level and at various levels of the school system: 4.° Basic, 8.° Basic and 2.° Medium, especially with tests of language and communication and mathematics. Both initiatives were directly involved Mario Leyton and Erika Himmel; the first to key positions in the Ministry of Education and the second as academic of the University of Chile and the Catholic University of Chile. Therefore, both have been recognized by the State with the National Prize of Sciences of Education in 2009 and 2011, respectively.
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