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

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In today's US it is almost impossible to avoid encountering standardized tests--mass-produced, multiple-choice, fill-in-the-bubble, machine-scored exams of all sorts. Standardized tests are used to assess the performance of public schools, in many systems to determine which students will be held back a grade, to decide who will get into college, and into graduate and professional school, and who will get certain jobs.

In "Standardized Minds," Peter Sacks delivers a devastating critique of the use of such tests. His indictment includes a wide range of particulars, only some of which can be summarized here.

First, standardized tests are not a source of useful information. A widely used reading test given to elementary school students can err by as much as three grade levels in measuring a student's reading level. The SAT, required for admission to most colleges, has no use other than to make predictions, with limited accuracy, of students' freshman year grades. The GRE, required for admission to most Ph.D. programs, actually has a negative correlation with future success as a scholar.

Second, standardized tests are very biased. The best known of these biases is that of the SAT against low-income, minority students. Sacks shows that this bias extends to other tests as well. Another bias identified by Sacks is that standardized tests are biased in favor of superficial thinking--the ability to rapidly recall and repeat facts--and against the deeper thinking necessary to solve complex real-world problems.

Third, and perhaps most harmfully, standardized tests promote "teaching to the test." A number of states have established what Sacks terms "high-stakes accountability" programs, in which standardized test scores determine whether students are promoted to the next grade or are allowed to graduate, and are used to rank the performance of schools. Sacks documents how such "high-stakes" programs cause teachers to spend enormous amounts of time drilling students in preparation for the tests. Such teaching practices promote rote memorization and superficial thinking at the expense of critical thinking skills and genuine understanding--hardly a desireable educational goal.

It is important to note that Sacks is not merely giving his personal opinions. He has studied and mastered a great deal of research. At the same time, his book is far more than a dry academic recital. Unlike the Dinesh D'Souzas of the world, Sacks knows the proper usage of anecdotes--to illustrate a generalzation, not as the basis for it. Of the many illuminating stories he tells, one bears repeating. St. John's University's psych department requires students entering the Ph.D. program to take the GRE, which is useless except to make somewhat accurate predictions of first-year grades. Students seeking a masters degree only, while they take the same first-year courses, are not required to take the GRE. However, if these students wish, on completing a masters degree, to enter the Ph.D. program, they must then take the GRE, even though the only value of the exam is to "predict" their grades in courses they have already taken.

Sacks ends the book by noting some optimistic trends, such as the growing number of colleges and universities which no longer require applicants to take the SAT. However, breaking the tyranny of standardized testing will not be easy--the political pressures for the kind of superficial "standards" and "accountability" such tests provide are enormous. But reading Sacks' book, and freeing your own mind from the spell cast by standardized test scores, would be a good start.

Mr. Sacks in his new publication, Standardized Minds, has done an outstanding job of placing norm-refrenced standardized tests, along with their associated multiple-choice item formats, in proper perspective. These tests have set standards for academic assessment for many years, and, as Mr. Sacks points out, are being questioned by many in the testing profession as being inapporpriate and insensitive as single and simplisthic guages of educational progress. He has documented extensive research on this subject, presented some impressive "case studies" of those who have been penalized in their career and life chioces based on "low" test scroes when all other extracurricular or in-school performances predicted otherwise. In addition to the many problems associated with mulitple-choice item types, a main focus is on the misunderstanding and misuse of the scores by all levels of society. As he so eloquently states, many educators are not properly taught how to interpret and use these data, legislative or government policy-makers have little or any idea of the substance or meaning of these scores, the media are at the mercy of the lack of knowledge (or political direction) fed them, and parents and children are left confused with numbers that do not give them specific constructive instructional information. The end result is that these test results are forced into a political and unethical framework which has greatly weakened their usefulness. If the desire is to help children learn and teachers teach, some interesting and effective alternatives are provided. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in improving educational assessment.

I am a high school senior so I am currently getting a lot of pressure from my parents to get that silly 1600 on my SAT which will take place in October and December this year. Then there's also the ACTs and the 3 SAT IIs! I was always suspicious of test prep companies, the ETS, and the SATs themselves. Living in Los Angeles, these test prep companies have grown like weeds in the community, sucking up money from middle and upper class students. Though I am fortunate, my parents have also forcefully enrolled me at one of these. My SAT school is doing a nice job with its profits and have managed to get a new paint job, redecorate the "classrooms", and to get more students and more teachers, to just get it bigger and bigger. While my "teachers" explain the concepts of the SAT, I can't help but wish I was in the library reading more books such as this or practicing the piano. It is so unfair that only the rich people can afford these classes and they are the ones who get the good scores on the SATs. After getting a mediocre score on the SAT in June, my parents have now considered me a total idiot, even though my report cards and comments from teachers say otherwise. This book is so chock-full of information that deserves wide reading. The author has done the most extensive research imaginable. The controversy of the standardized tests is something that should have been addressed and Peter Sacks is the best one to do it. He has full of statistics and information to back up everything he says, yet he never just blows them off to you, but explains them. In addition to statistics, are the personal recollections of the people he interviewed-the teachers, educators, college admissions people, and even students. The tale of one student who had 7 tries to take a silly test and not being able to graduate and forced to stay in high school was frightening to the say the least. I am also glad that the author also included a section about the infamous incident in 1998 in Massachusetts when everyone condemned the teachers that they failed "a basic reading and writing test", which had become a punch-line for many of Jay Leno's jokes that year. It was rather strange that the media did not go into detail about the exact questions or the more specifics of that exam, but everyone just wanted to call these teachers "idiots".

The book is comprehensive on all testing, with the exception of secondary school admissions tests such as the ISEE and the SSAT. Going to California private schools, I have become familiar with ERBs and the Stanford 9 tests. In order to get into private high schools, I had to take the ISEE and the SSAT. Now I have the SATs and ACTs to conquer.

This is more than a book analyzing the damaging effects of the testing culture. The author suggest an standing ovation-worthy proposal of evaluating students on what they can do, whether it is projects and more research opportunities such as outside occupational research or conducting a lab or evaluating a student 's portfolio, instead of standardized tests.

Yes, this book should be read by politicians educators, teachers, yet I am here to emphasize STUDENTS should read this book too. Students who are daunted by the SATs need to be educated about our obsessive testing culture and that they are NOT idiots for a silly number.

Too often, the high-stakes testing debate wanders into the realm smoke and mirrors. If you follow this debate, you'll find the same arguments presented here that have been presented all along: standardized tests are biased, they do not measure intelligence or knowledge, etc. What you don't normally get are the facts that back up this argument, and that is what Sacks provides. This book concretizes what has become (wrongly) a very abstract, political issue, and should be regularly referenced by all who oppose the mediocrity such testing rewards. These tests may sound good in theory, but in practice, Sacks shows with convincing success, they just don't do the job.

I was in the middle of reading Standardized Minds when I heard a panel of "Experts" talk about the future of LA Unified School District on Which Way LA, a local radio show. Specifically they were discussing the notion of linking teacher bonus pay to the performance of their students on standardized tests. I wish Peter Sacks had been on the program as he successfully demolishes the continued folly of our reliance on standardized tests as a way to judge our schools, our teachers and our students. I wholeheartedly endorse the opinions of the previous two reviewers. Speaking as a parent, I can only say that the more people who read this book, engage in a discussion about the issues so eloquently raised within it and help push the national dialogue on education forward in the directions the author suggests, the better off our kids and we as a society will be.

Peter Sacks's "Standardized Minds" provides readers with a critical analysis of American standardized assessments. Indirectly, he reminds me of the famed, far left scholar, Noam Chomsky, who creatively exposes the covert blueprints of corporate greed and power. In essence, the Chomsky-like analysis of Sacks, strongly contradicts the ignorant claims that standardized tests are harmless and rigorously beneficial in the learning processes of our young learners. Attentively, he diminishes the qualitative distinction between exams like the SAT, GRE, and common national assessments in comparison to performance assessments and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). More importantly, his text provides a diversity of vivid examples and theoretical implications for challenging and arming against the discriminatory practices of corporate entailed movements. Some of these examples include the testing of young children, as young as Pre-K, as well as schools contrasting, conservative viewpoints that regardless of a child's real life and practical abilities, they are deemed only as valid as the dubious results mapped out on paper. Sacks also provides the binary examples of men and women who have been discriminated via questionable standardized testing practices, only to have their norms challenged through illustrative examples of success from such individuals, including those of a famous New York Times Journalist, an activist and TV producer, and noted, Heisman Trophy, NFL athletes whose athletic feats are criticized according to the results of a standardized test.

There are sections of the book that are more engaging than others, particularly between shifts of experiential and ideological narrative. For example, the instances where the rhetorical questions of tests equaling merit are continually echoed, may seem repetitive, but are quickly disregarded when the reader realizes that such reverberations are meant to inspire change and reform of the status quo. In addition, Sacks's liberal arguments are solidified through historical and contemporary examples of inequity, ranging from the claims of "Spearman" and his aim towards eugenics to the shocking (yet skeptical) feats of hypocritical principals and superintendents claiming students' success on the basis of standardized testing.

Interestingly, the book indirectly (in most instances, directly) touches the spheres of critical race theory, notably outlining the gaps between the privileged, primarily white populations, and the underprivileged, minority students. Here, Sacks's keens in on issues of class, income and poverty, illustrating how gaps in standardized test results are more dependent on class background and behavioral traits, than actual schooling. More implicitly, he portrays specific examples where drops in poverty reveal a rise in test scores. Thus, the relevant correlations between schooling and testing are relatively insignificant. Above all, Sacks instills the roots of justice, equity and fragments of anger. In the process of reading how successful, noteworthy, and in some instances, even famed individuals were prejudiced against solely on account of their test scores and not their pragmatic trajectories, it clenches your fist and fills you revolution.

Retrospectively, I would imagine the text calls out leaders in the field of educational reform, but that would be selfish. Considering how many "leaders" in the field conform without resistance, Sacks presents it openly to anyone willing to denounce standardized test, to censure the ills of young men and women not being able to graduate as a result of test scores, to progressive teachers in the trenches, and castigate selfish, ignorant individuals looking to benefit themselves materialistically, rather than investing in humanity and the welfare of others.

The book is a critique of America's testing obsession through a thorough examination of a series of educational reform disasters advanced by increased testing programs, educational policymakers' hidden personal/political agenda, and the continuous and unrelenting presence of big business profits in testing at the social expenditure of our nation's minority population resulting in the cultivation of a system of "pseudo-meritocracy".

A major strength of the book is Sacks' ability and expertise in using research findings to strengthen his thought-provoking arguments against the standardized testing machine to prove how our culture places excessive value on society's "potential to achieve" without any substantial proof that these instruments of testing actually provide any viable information at all. The author proves that taxpayers are largely conditioned into believing that the tests actually measure intelligence, student performance, teacher performance, or even school performance by systematically breaking down the history of testing and its effects on the general public including the rich, the poor, and the politically
motivated. Sacks points out that mental testing "is a highly effective means of social control, predominantly serving the interests of the nation's elite", or as a means controlling resources from people who do not want to lose them. The most interesting portion of the book is chapter five mainly because the author bashes the state of Texas
and providing data to substantiate that Texas spends the most on standardized testing than any other state. The author criticizes test promoters as being "Machiavellian educators" by devising methods to legally justify flunking students who they think would not succeed in the next grade (George W. included). Sacks also concludes that there is
a huge potential for money making in the test business and corporations are making millions, if not billions in the testing industry. Affirmative action is also besieged as tool for higher education which benefits children of the affluent. As technology improves, there will only be more elaborate schemes to perpetuate the ignorance of the American public. There is so much aggravating evidence of profound institutional racism in this book that I could probably go on forever.

Are there any weaknesses in the book? I really could not find any. Even though a few more examples of authentic and performance assessment could have been explored, the author does an excellent job of attacking the validity of America's testing culture. A great read for parents, teachers, administrators, policy makers, and any other countries even remotely interested in employing the testing culture.

In short, the book is an extremely useful and effective critical analysis of the American testing culture and the detrimental effect on the nation's immigrant/ethnic population, minority population, and other people who are deemed "non-cognizant". As an educator, I plan to use this information to continue to inform my learning community of the
dangerous effects of standardized testing and the contradictory effect they have on our school system today.

Peter Sacks' detailed and in-depth text focuses on five distinct aspects of standardized testing in the United States. First, he describes the origin of intelligence and achievement testing. Then, he explains the damage done to schools and students as a result of employing these kinds of high-stakes accountability measures. Next, he describes how these practices have affected workers the workplace. Then, he identifies the vested interests in the profit-driven testing industry. After, he briefly describes some alternative assessment strategies to standardized testing. Finally, he shares some examples of higher education institutions that no longer use testing to make admission and rejection decisions.

One strength of this book is the voluminous amount of research Sacks conducted to tell the story of the origins of standardized testing. While other authors articulate the multiple effects of standardized testing, Sacks effectively teases out multiple flaws and biases present in the very first forms of intelligence testing. Shockingly, many of these flaws and biases are still present in our current high-stakes maniacal testing culture.

Another major strength of this book is Peter Sacks' background as a business and economic journalist. Not only is his writing style eloquent and readable, but his perspective is free of any bias resulting from public school classroom experience or formal training in education. While politicians have been arguing a causational link between test scores and economic prosperity, Sacks provides ample evidence to the contrary.

Many books have been written by and for educators explaining the negative effects of high-stakes testing on students and educators. Sacks is able to go beyond the school and the classroom by listing several specific examples of adults in the workforce who are negatively impacted by the use, misuse, and abuse of high-stakes testing. He writes, "There are standardized tests for wine tasters, baseball umpires, plumbers, ballroom dancing instructors, Bible scholars, and art collectors" (p. 170).

Sacks presents an unfortunate story of Carmelo Melendez with Illinois Bell. The company was impressed with his experience and qualifications. Melendez successfully navigated multiple interviews and proved himself a worthy candidate. However, he needed to pass a general aptitude test in order to be hired. Like a seasoned journalist, Sacks dives into Melendez's personal history with standardized testing. Melendez was forced to alter his career plans on numerous occasions resulting from poor performances on standardized testing. Unfortunately, his case with Illinois Bell was no different.

Julie Gauthier, who earned a bachelor's degree in history from Fordham University during which she studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, also earned a master's degree in teaching history from the history department at Northeastern University and a post graduate certificate in education from Queens University in Northern Ireland. However, she was unable to pass the multiple-choice Massachusetts teacher test. Deb Andrake, who earned extremely high marks on her teaching performance evaluations, also was unable to pass the Massachusetts teacher test. Melendez, Gauthier, and Andrake were unable to perform jobs they were highly qualified for and capable of doing because of their inability to perform on one standardized assessment.

On the other hand, Sacks also includes examples of individuals who successfully pass a test, but are unqualified. The state of Maine requires one to pass a written test to be licensed as a "master guide" for outdoor excursions. Don Kleiner, the legislative director for the Professional Maine Guide Association recalled two separate alarming incidents with two different individuals who passed the master guide exam. One prepared to set bear baits without proper attire and equipment and another was unable to start a fire in the rain. From Kleiner's perspective, only minimal skill and experience were required to perform these simple tasks.

Although the well written, richly detailed, and identifiable examples make this book very accessible, Sacks wrote this book before the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. I would be very interested to learn his perspective on the most and far reaching high-stakes accountability-linked assessment movement in contemporary educational history.

One criticism I have with this text is while Sacks does a magnificent job tracking down the individuals responsible for creating some of the very first intelligence tests, he does not go after the individuals who write the current tests that dominate our educational landscape. He refers to the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, the California Achievement Test, the Stanford Achievement Test, the Metropolitan Achievement Tests, and the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills among others. He does go after the corporations who are reaping profits from the widespread use and obsession with the tests. However, he does not go after the individuals who created and continue to write these tests. He does not hold individual test writers accountable for perpetuating the flaws and biases that persist in standardized testing.

Criticism aside, anyone who considers themselves a stakeholder in public education can benefit from reading this book. Anyone who uses a method of standardized testing to make decisions can benefit from reading this book. Anyone who is involved in making educational policy decisions who does not have any formal experience in education needs to read this book. Legislators at every level need to read this book because they are ultimately the ones who will dictate the way we define learning. One thing is for certain, standardized testing does not adequately define learning.

It is common to see journalists commenting on education without having the slightest clue what goes on in a real classroom. This refreshingly different from the usual teacher-bashing that we see in the press.

This book displays such a good understanding of the complex realities of education that I read through much of the book before it dawned on me that it was written by a journalist. The depth of understaning made it seem like the book was written by a teacher or education reasearher.

As an additional bonus, book also displays a sound grasp of the technical problems with large-scale testing and makes some of the statistical issues accessible to a lay reader. For a more in-depth coverage of the technical issues, see also Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us.