Overview

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 ability 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 Wars presents a roadmap for rethinking college admissions that moves us past the statistically weak and socially divisive SAT/ACT. The author advocates 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 from Daniel Golden, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting in the Wall Street Journal on admissions, and a chapter on alternative tests from Robert J. 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 Wars will be important reading for a wide audience, including college administrators and faculty, high school guidance counselors, education journalists, and parents. Book Features: An authoritative combination of voices, including college presidents, admissions deans, scholars from economics, history, and sociology, and test-industry participants. New information on the racial and gender biases built into the SAT. The only independent case studies of the limitations of the new SAT. A step-by-step guide on how college admissions can go test-optional. Alternative tests to SAT/ACT developed by Robert J. Sternberg. Contributors: Martha Allman, Richard C. Atkinson, Chang Young Chung, Christopher Cornwell, John Aubrey Douglass, Thomas J. Espenshade, Saul Geiser, Daniel Golden, David Hawkins, John Latting, Charles Murray, David B. Mustard, Kevin Rask, Jay Rosner, Chloe Melissa Rothstein, Robert Schaeffer, Robert J. Sternberg, Jill Tiefenthaler, Jessica Van Parys, and Teresa Wonnell.

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9780807752630

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SAT Wars can be useful for both researchers and administrators in higher education with interests in fairness and diversity issues in undergraduate admissions testing. -The Review of Higher Education

SAT Wars can be useful for both researchers and administrators in higher education with interests in fairness and diversity issues in undergraduate admissions testing. -The Review of Higher Education

Author Information

Joseph A. Soares is Professor of Sociology at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

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