SAT Wars

What can a college admissions officer safely predict about the future of a 17-year-old? Are the best and the brightest students the ones who can check off the most correct boxes on a multiple-choice exam? Or are there better ways of measuring abililty and promise? In this penetrating and revealing look at high-stakes standardized admissions tests, Joseph Soares demonstrates the far-reaching and mostly negative impact of the tests on American life and calls for nothing less than a national policy change. SAT Warspresents a roadmap for rethinking college admissions that moves us past the statistically weak and socially diverse SAT/ACT. The author calls for evaluation tools with a greater focus on what youth actually accomplish in high school as a more reliable indicator of qualities that really matter in one's life and to one's ability to contribute to society. This up-to-date book features contributions by well-known experts, including a piece by Daniel Golden, who won a Pulitzer Prize fo his reporting in the Wall Street Journal on admissions, and a chapter on alternative tests from Robert Sternberg, who is the world's most-cited living authority on educational research. As we continue to debate the use and misuse of standardized testing, SAT Warswill be important reading for a wide audience, including college administrators and faculty, high school guidance counsellors, education jounalists, and parents.