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Nicholas Lemann

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6 segments
44:03

The History of the Standardized Test.

Journalist and staff writer for The New Yorker Nicholas Lemann is the author of the new book "The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy" (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux). It's a social history of how reformers in the mid 1940s set upon universal testing criteria (the Educational Testing Service, purveyors of the SAT) as a way of creating a new democratic elite, drawn from every section and every background of America. And it's about how that 50 year old system has failed.

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