Those who look askance at testing should not rest their case on the simple notion that tests are 'unfair to the poor,'" they wrote. "Life is unfair to the poor. Tests merely measure the results."

Christopher Jencks and David Riesman

How did the SAT become essential to college admissions?

The SAT was introduced by progressives to accomplish the same goals that our contemporary progressives now say it impedes: democratizing higher education, uplifting the poor, ending the class spoils system, and making merit rather than accidents of birth the measure of success.

The irony is hard to miss. From the progressives' panacea in the mid-20th century to the progressives' bogeyman in the early 21st, the evolution of the SAT is a story about our shifting notions of merit, democracy, populism, the life of the mind, and what we expect from higher education--an industry into which the country pours many billions of dollars a year. In a way kids are right to be jittery. The SAT is more than a test, and always has been. If it's being condemned today, this is a grisly instance of the revolution devouring its children.

The SAT first became popular in the 1930s, when one side won an argument and the other side lost. The argument was over how college administrators should choose the students who would attend their schools--and who would, by extension, enter the country's leadership class in politics, business, and religion, at a time when fewer than 2 percent of American adults held post-secondary degrees. In the 19th century, those hoping to attend college submitted themselves to interviews with school faculty or took essay exams the faculty concocted. In 1900 a consortium of East Coast colleges formed the Collegiate Entrance Examination Board, the forerunner of today's College Board, to regulate the chaos. The board wrote and disseminated "achievement tests" as a way of standardizing admissions from one school to another. The tests assessed knowledge of English grammar and literature, American and ancient history, Latin and classical Greek--the fundamentals of the prep school curriculum, and the things that every educated gentleman was presumed to know. A high score virtually guaranteed college admission.

The system of achievement tests worked well for awhile. But before long the bluebloods at Columbia, Harvard, and elsewhere were alarmed to discover that a disproportionate number of high scorers were not People Like Us. Many of them, indeed, were Jews. As Jerome Karabel tells the story in his magisterial history of college admissions, The Chosen, administrators quickly adapted. Personal interviews became common as a way of screening applicants. And the criteria for admissions were mysteriously enlarged. Admissions officers claimed to weigh ineffable qualities like "leadership," "breeding," "character," and "well-roundedness."

 

Now that the SAT has come full circle, read the rest of Andrew Ferguson’s column:

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