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Standardized Minds: The High Price Of America's Testing Culture
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Product Description：
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. Amazon.com Review：
In the well-researched and compelling Standardized Minds, former journalist and economist Peter Sacks launches an exhaustive attack on the national obsession with testing--and lands a few hits. If you think you've heard every argument against standardized tests, think again. Sacks methodically picks away at our feeble attempts to measure the mind, reaching back into the history of testing with unsettling revelations about the creation of the first intelligence test and its many flaws. He deftly illustrates how the belief of inferior cultures motivated the creator of the SAT college entrance exam and takes on all that standardized testing has wrought: ability grouping, gifted programs, state accountability efforts--even the effect on parents whose perceptions of their own children are often shaken by scores on a sheet of paper.
Sacks peppers his critique with personal anecdotes and tales from testing "victims," whether they be the highly educated, well-to-do parents whose children struggle with Manhattan's preschool "baby boards" or the successful New York Times business reporter whose career-center test scores suggest he try another line of work. Once labeled a "lefty education gadfly" by the National Review, Sacks lives up to his nickname as he makes a case for replacing standardized test scores with academic portfolios that include essays, schoolwork, and more comprehensive examples of a student's performance. But his argument should give even his most conservative critics pause: Standardized Minds is a persuasive must-read for parents, educators, and lawmakers that challenges our basic assumptions about intelligence and pays homage to the talented minds we may have overlooked in our fervor to rate the human brain. --Jodi Mailander Farrell |
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