This is not as telling as he thinks. The pre-SAT system, based on recommendations from headmasters of private New England boarding schools, was certainly not founded in democratic debate. From the evidence Lemann presents, it is apparent that colleges turned to the SAT out of rivalry with each other, as each institution feared getting stuck with a mediocre student body. Standardized testing gained importance in college admissions through a competitive, pluralistic process, not a conspiratorial one. In Lemann's view, SAT scores should play only a minimal role in college admissions, because they explain only about 16 percent of the variation in first term freshman grades.
Most colleges choose from the applicant pool in part by scores.
The results might look very different, as admissions offices are keenly aware, were students with much lower scores admitted. Lemann frequently alludes to the charge that testing is culturally biased against minorities. To his credit, Lemann acknowledges, however obliquely, that, at least with respect to black-white differences, which have been intensively studied, the SAT predicts the first term grades of black college students as well as it predicts the grades of white ones. The most exasperating weakness of Lemann's critique of the SAT is that he never shows a better method of selecting the students who would most excel at college. Until we learn methods to improve the schooling of disadvantaged children, achievement tests will not result in a different pattern of class recruitment.