Amazon.com description: Product Description: ''This book is an important contribution to the reassessment of the use of standardized tests in college admissions. . . . Colleges that are well-prepared for a discussion about standardized admission tests will understand how their research aligns with the information provided in this publication''
--David Hawkins, National Association for College Admission Counseling


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 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 Sternberg.


Contributors: Martha Allman * Richard C. Atkinson * Chang Young Chung * Christopher Cornwell * John Douglas * Thomas J. Espenshade * Saul Geiser * Daniel Golden * David Hawkins * John Latting * Charles Murray * David B. Mustard * Kevin Rask * Jay Rosner * Chole Melissa Rothstein * Robert Schaeffer * Robert J. Sternberg * Jill Tiefenthaler * Jessica Van Parys * Teresa Wonnell