Jim Webb who was a Marine officer in Vietnam, a journalist, a novelist, and then a Democratic senator from Virginia saw standardized tests as his route to social mobility from a poor background in the rural south.

It's a damn shame Jim Webb stepped away from politics.

I've long thought that our intuitions about IQ tests are backwards; they are the most fair and least biased method we have to sort applicants for things. The more 'holistic' the process, the more that subjectivity (and therefore bias) creeps in. The only way around it is affirmative action, which leads to the current state of affairs.

I think some of the persistence of hating on standardized tests is that standardized tests are one of the few barriers against the worst rich kids inheriting status from their parents.

Sure, a little bit of test prep will help many people, if you’ve never seen a standardized test before some familiarity is good for you. But some of these kids could not test their way out of a paper bag and the only hope for them is hire a ringer to take the test in their place.

Yeah I mean we just had a whole college admissions scandal a few years back with rich parents trying to get their not-so-smart kids into elite colleges.

Not even elite colleges! UCs...

Are you suggesting that we should close schools and ship that book to every family? Might have worked for you, but I can guarantee you that it will be disastrous for most students.

Nah, not at all -- just that the SAT is a reasonable test of ability that is in fact accessible to people w/o rich educational backgrounds.

If you're born poor or somehow outside of the social mainstream, standardized testing is your friend.

(I wasn't commenting one way or the other on K-12 education -- I had a mixed experience personally...I think it could've been done a lot better. My wife had a great experience. But she went to private school.)