ABSTRACT
The American Creed, wrote Gunnar Myrdal in An American Dilemma, 'prescribes that the Negro child or youth should have just as much educational opportunity as is offered anyone else in the same community'. The practice of paying comparably trained and experienced African-American teachers less than whites was a cornerstone of the southern system of caste education and an ideal target for National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) legal attacks. During the first stage of the equalization campaign in Maryland and Virginia, the NAACP established precedents that forced southern school boards to eliminate caste salary schedules, but left the door open to new kinds of discrimination. Unable to pay African Americans less just because of their race, white political and educational leaders turned to the testing and measurement specialist Ben Wood, who had recently constructed the National Teacher Examination (NTE), for help in devising new ways of evaluating teachers and determining their pay.
