The Forum for World Education is pleased to share that Steering Committee Member Dr. Randy E. Bennett has published “Fairness and Postsecondary Admissions Testing: A Selective History” in Applied Measurement in Education, a leading journal in educational measurement.
Spanning more than a century—from the first nationally administered cognitive tests of World War I to today’s admissions policy debates—the article traces how conceptions of fairness in testing have evolved: from fairness for individuals achieved through standardization, to a recognition of fairness for groups during the civil rights era, and now toward an emerging return to the individual, this time through personalization. Dr. Bennett shows how unequal opportunity continues to shape test performance, and suggests that emerging technologies, including generative AI, may help make personalized, fairer assessment a reality.
Dr. Bennett is one of the most distinguished scholars in the field. Over a career of more than four decades at Educational Testing Service (ETS), he held the Norman O. Frederiksen Chair in Assessment Innovation, and he is a past president of the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). His work offers valuable perspective for educators and institutions worldwide as they consider how assessment can better serve diverse learners—a question central to FWE’s mission.
Read the full article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08957347.2026.2674562