Systematic and disciplined assessment of individual abilities and achievements have had a substantial impact on educational processes and systems. The impact, however, has not always been positive. Where it provides teachers, students, parents, and others with information they do not already have, it offers real benefits. Where it genuinely diagnoses weaknesses and points to strategies for dealing with them, it can have significant impact. Where it simply labels and leads to treatment based on the labels, it can wreak great damage at a personal and social level. In this address, I will concentrate on the positives but I will not ignore the negatives. In building up a picture of what contemporary test theory can offer, I will look at the origins of our attempts to build psychological and educational scales and at some of the ways in which psychologists have sought to use the products of this “science of human measurement”. In discussing the possibilities that might flow from contemporary understandings of test theory, I will present a number of examples of recent applications in education.
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