----- Original Message ----- From: "Wojtek S" <wsoko52 at gmail.com>
The chief reason why tests are used is political. Tests are cheap and easy to deploy disciplinary measures that reinforce the authority of gatekeepers and keep their underlings in line. Their main and only purpose is to legitimate denying access to the resources that the gatekeepers control. Beyond that, their usefulness is close to nil.
This is why the US, which can be thought of as a penal colony with a smiley face painted all over it, has so many of them. As Stephen Jay Gould convincingly argued in _The Mismeasure of Man_ the testing business was a major venue of bestowing the aura of scientific respectability on racism and xenophobia.
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Test making and giving is also very profitable.
I took the SAT with no training, no practice, and no breakfast.
Forty years later, when my daughter took it, I had to fork out $500 on a training class. They've changed the test, put a lot of tricks in it, so you need the training....
Joanna