R. Bruce McGill, 84, Is Dead; Educator Led Development of Tests -- Rest in Peace

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Subject: R. Bruce McGill, 84, Is Dead; Educator Led Development of Tests

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heart failure

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Date Posted: January 11, 2005 11:07:08 EDT

R. Bruce McGill, an educator who led the development of two assessment tests widely used by private schools, died on Jan. 1 in Boston. He was 84 and lived in Westwood, Mass.

The cause was heart failure, said his son Michael V. McGill, the schools superintendent in Scarsdale, N.Y.

A former schools superintendent, Dr. McGill was president of the Educational Records Bureau, a nonprofit testing agency, for 16 years starting in 1972. Under his leadership, the bureau sought to measure more than the basic skills gauged by state-mandated exams.

The bureau introduced the Independent School Entrance Examination, an admission test for entrance into grades 5 through 12, and the Comprehensive Test Program, a series of aptitude tests now administered to 260,000 students each year. The tests used questions developed by the Educational Testing Service. (The admission test given by many of New York's most elite private schools, informally known as the E.R.B. test, was developed by the bureau after Dr. McGill's tenure.)

The Comprehensive Test Program, scored and returned in 15 days, gives teachers data to help them refine their lesson plans.

"It's still consistently different from other standardized tests today," said Susan Nigro, a former director of an Educational Testing Service division that helped develop the program. "It was designed for schools that wanted to tell whether their students were truly mastering all of the points of the curriculum."

Raymon Bruce McGill was born in Andover, N.Y., on March 21, 1920, and graduated from Alfred University in 1941. He received a master's degree from New York University and later earned a doctorate in education, his family said.

He was principal of Edgemont High School in Scarsdale and the Robert E. Bell School in Chappaqua, N.Y. He later was superintendent of schools in Wayland, Mass., for six years. While teaching at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, he wrote two science textbooks.

In addition to his son Michael, of Hartsdale, N.Y., Dr. McGill is survived by his wife, Katharine Newbury McGill; another son, David R., of Marlborough, Mass.; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. His first wife, Elizabeth Vincent McGill, died in 1984.

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