The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy

Rating:
Summary: Not what you think....
Review: Having looked over the other reader reviews for this book, I am surprised by what the reviewers expected this book to be about. It is not an expose on the SAT. It is, rather, a look at the Test (capital letter intended). It is a look into the people and philosophies that shaped Educational testing and, to be frank, America itself.
Lemann portrays the key players involved in the testing movement, its propagation, and its continuation to the present day. He also gives to us a look into the Meritocratic (or rulers determined by their merit rather than money) society envisoned by Jefferson.
This is an extremely interesting book. This book will leave you thinking. You will challenge your own ideologies.

Rating:
Summary: Very short on valid analysis
Review: Lemann is a perfect example of a Bleeding-Heart Politically Correct liberal - the sort of egalitarian maniac that strives to sacrifice the QUALITY of our society in the name of E-QUALITY.

What sickens me about books like these is that the author - prior to any research - has his own deeply entrenched biases that he merely seeks to validate by picking out "evidence" in a very selective manner.

Lemann's analysis of the SAT is so short on statistical and technical detail that it resembles a poet trying to write about advanced physics. His approach is downright subjective in many ways, and merely confirms my belief that PC liberals like himself are a plague on American society.

I happen to be an Asian-American student who scored perfect on the Math section of the SAT and also did very well on the Verbal section. But my success in life is far from guaranteed. No, the SAT is not the most important factor determining one's future. It's one of many things that college admission officials look at. And what I find weird about Lemann is that he thinks that success in life depends on going to a prestigious private university; it doesn't.

In this Politically Correct world, the liberals can't come to grips with the fact that people are not created equal. There are fundamental differences between individual persons as well as between the sexes and different races. Almost no one thought otherwise until Marxist and socialist ideas wormed their way into Western politics and intelligentsia.

Equality of opportunity is the only true opportunity there should be, and the United States offers more of that than the vast majority of countries in the world. Equality of results is not only unrealistic, but highly undesirable.

What kind of dull place would our planet be if everyone were the same? If everyone had equal potential in track running and other sports, what would the Olympics be all about? If everyone had equal intelligence, who would we look up to as possessors of wisdom? The world is founded on inequality. It's the natural order of things.

Yes, inequality does bring injustice. But given a choice, any person would choose INJUSTICE and ORDER as opposed to JUSTICE and DISORDER.

Rating:
Summary: Enlightening, but ultimately disappointing
Review: Nicholas Lemann is a fine writer whose previous book about the migration of African-Americans from South to North, "The Promised Land," is one of the most important nonfiction books of the decade. Unfortunately, "The Big Test" isn't up to the same standard, though it's interesting and well worth reading.

Like other reviewers, I found Lemann's early history of the SAT and the ETS fascinating, but found myself puzzling over the book's lengthy digression into recounting the efforts of a group of Ivy League-educated California lawyers to derail Proposition 209, the anti-affirmative action initiative. I have a hard time seeing a connection between the two narratives, though I suppose that the two taken together show the difficulties this country has had in trying to adopt a "fair" or purely "meritocratic" system of admission to selective universities. The two narratives also make the ironic point that some of the most highly rewarded beneficiaries of that system became its most vigorous opponents.

Lemann seems to take the position that only people with high SAT scores go to selective universities, and only graduates of selective universities end up having a high income in later life. There are simply too many exceptions to this rule for us to believe in it. Most selective colleges still practice some form of affirmative action, consider criteria other than grades and test scores in admissions, and admit plenty of students with low SAT scores. A few (Bowdoin, for example) don't even require SAT scores.

A point Lemann makes, but seems to ignore in the pursuit of his argument, is that a college education is now available to a huge number of young Americans, probably a higher percentage than in any other country in the world, providing great opportunity for upward mobility. Many excellent universities do not require SAT scores in the 700's, and these days you don't need to be an Ivy League graduate to get a good job.

Finally, we are fortunate to live in a country where the greatest rewards and recognition go not to people who get good grades and score high on the SAT (whom Lemann calls "Mandarins"), but to people with special abilities and vision, or who are willing to work hard and take risks (whom Lemann calls "Talents"). Fortunately, "Talents" are the real winners in our society, and we are less credential-conscious than Lemann thinks. It is also true that many of Lemann's "Mandarins" end up as low-paid academics, government employees or journalists, or as risk-averse lawyers, doctors and middle managers. It's hard to accept Lemann's argument that high SAT scores are the only true ticket to the good life.

Rating:
Summary: boring
Review: The Big Test by Nicholas Lemann is not a book for folks who have to take the SAT and want to do better, or a book for someone like myself, a high school teacher expecting an analysis of current or recent research about the SAT. The book does give an exhaustive and interesting history of the early days of the test, but focusses a great deal on the personalities of the people involved in the development of the test, rather than an analysis of the test itself. While this background is interesting, it did not lead me to the same conclusion as the author-- that the test has created an elite meritocracy of folks who are admitted to the top schools, and then automatically go on to top financial success, leaving all the low scorers far behind. There are far too many counter examples of people who are successful financially, or in other ways, for the premise of the book to hold without further evidence. I also know a couple of Ivy League grads who are poor.

I was bothered by his constant use of the pejorative term "mandarins" for well-educated people with good well-paying jobs. It made it seem that that the author was not really trying for an unbiased discussion.

There have been at least 1700 studies of various aspects of the SAT and its use in college admissions, and I found it quite surprising that these studies were largely ignored.

Even though the subtitle is "The Secret History of the American Meritocracy", the last third of the book, which is devoted to a description of the battle to end affirmative action in CA, seemed to have veered too far from its topic of the SAT. I felt that this part of the book was far too long, and minute in its description of the personalities of the people involved in that fight. Although parts of the book are interesting, you need to be a patient reader with time on your hands to wade through the extraneous stuff to find the meat. You might want to read just the last chapter where he makes his case for how college admissions should work.

Rating:
Summary: The 1967 Selective Service Qualifications Exam was omitted
Review: The book covered the 1951 'Draft Deferment Test' used during the Korean War, but I could find no discussion of the 1967 (April-July) Selective Service Qualifications Exam, which was used to determine if undergraduates and graduate students would maintain a '2S' deferment. I believe a score of 80 was needed for graduate study and a 75 for undergraduate study. It was a much more important exam than the SAT, GRE, ATGSB (GMAT), all of which I took.

Rating:
Summary: The Richmond Reviewer Is Right
Review: The previous reviewer is correct: the first third of the book indeed focuses on what the title leads one to expect and does, in fact, give a brief history of the haphazard evolution of the American SAT. However, the remaining two thirds is a loosely interconnecting series of vignettes which does not significantly illuminate the effects of the SAT I on American society in general. Interesting stories, but not what I was expecting.

Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating Read...
Review: This book is well written and informative. It should be on the "must read" list of anyone who has even a remote interest in the state of American education and public policy. In a functioning democracy, that should include all of us.

It is, however, an injustice to call this just a book. It is actually two books, roughly connected by a premise not sustained. The first book deals with the history and presumptions behind the present educational testing process as a selection method for determining access to higher education, and is by far the more important. The second book deals with the electoral process surrounding the affirmative action initiatives in California, and while interesting, is actually something of a cul-de-sac in proving what on the surface appears to be Lemann's main thesis.

Affirmative action is, even by Lemann's own admission, a judicially gerrymandered solution to problems created not by testing, but by previous inequities in society. While the faulty reasoning of the Warren court as interpreted by the Johnson Administration in developing the basis for affirmative action is at least as questionable as the faulty reasoning underlying the basis for educational testing, the two issues do not share a common causal relation.

It is almost as though Lemann started out to write a book about the California affirmative action inititatives and halfway through discovered a larger story, but was unable or unwilling to trash the affirmative action stuff to write the book that needed to be written.

Rather than making the affirmative action his ultimate proof, Lemann would have been better to make this a side argument in the larger question which needs be debated, "Whether the historical presumptions underlying the present testing system are valid, and as a result, does the testing system's role in determining college admissions need to be revised?"

The answer to both questions is, undoubtedly, yes. There are many additional indications that the present system is deficient, not the least of which is the number of extremely successful individuals who have eschewed the formal educational process (Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Ted Turner, Steve Jobs, etc.) The relationship between the increasing mandarinization of our government and professions and the disaffectation of society as a whole is also especially relevant, as the other society which relied upon such methods ultimately self-destructed (the Chinese empire).

Unfortunately, by focussing on only affirmative action, and not providing additional proofs for what appears to be his main thesis, Lemann turns what could have been an extremely important book into one which is merely a well written and thought provoking read.

Rating:
Summary: De Tocqueville Would Find This Well Worth Reading
Review: When my daughters were just beginning the college admissions process a mere three years ago, I had no idea how things had changed or why--and the degree to which my own experience of the process had become irrelevant. This book does much to make that all clear, in prose which smacks of Tom Wolfe and is peopled with fascinating vignettes of characters, known and unknown: from Presidents James Bryant Conant, Clark Kerr, and Kingman Brewster to Henry Chauncy, "Inky" Clark, and Molly Munger, just to name a few. Lemann's thesis is essentially one of good intentions gone painfully awry. The Ivy League and other highly selective colleges have been debrided of old families and old money, only to be replaced by the narrowly proficient and unduly ambitious. It's not a pretty picture and one wants to believe it less important than Lemann and many applicants and their parents think. Much of the book appeared in a series of articles in the New Yorker and, unfortunately, is not much better than the sum of its parts. But I still heartily recommend this book. It puts our elite in focus and gives perspective to one of the most debated issues of our time--affirmative action.