Standardized Minds : The High Price of America's Testing Culture

A hard-hitting examination of the ways in which standardized tests sustain the privileged and punish the poor, complete with a plan for meaningful change in schools and in the workplace

We've been told time and again that standardized tests aren't perfect but that they're the best tool we have to make important decisions. Is this really true? What are the flaws of such testing? Why is your father's occupation a better predictor of SAT scores than virtually any other factor? Whose interests do these tests serve? And, most important, what can we do to hold one another accountable to standards at all levels of schools and in the workplace?

Standardized Minds dramatically shows how our unhealthy and enduring obsession with intelligence testing affects us all, from the day we enter kindergarten to the day we apply for that corporate job. Drawing creative solutions from the headlines and the frontlines, Sacks demonstrates proven alternatives to such testing and details a plan to make the American meritocracy legitimate and fair.

"This is a powerful critique of standardized testing and an unsettling indictment of a society that continues to embrace these tests uncritically." -Howard Gardner

Peter Sacks is a journalist and essayist. His essays on education and American culture have appeared in Change, Thought & Action, The American Enterprise, and The New York Times. He lives in Boise, Idaho.