The Political Economy of Testing and Opportunity Allocation

How should a society committed to the ideas of merit, the free marketplace, equality of opportunity, and fairness allocate scarce educational and employment opportunities? How should a pluralistic, democratic society make relevant and justifiable distinctions among competitors for the limited supply of high-reward educational and employment opportunities? In the United States, the test has become one of the major vehicles for determining individual merit, for assuring fairness of judgment in the assessment of merit, and for making merit-based opportunity allocation decisions. In short, the test has become the major means for answering the fundamental questions about the nature of opportunity allocation in American life.' As the present study will show, this trend toward increased dependency on tests to make distinctions among competitors is not likely to change any time soon. Moreover, as the trend toward more testing continues, we can predict that the polity's interest in the larger policy implications of increased test use will grow. This certainly will be the case for representatives of certain minority subpopulation groups, particularly African Americans, whose experience with standardized ability tests as measures of merit has left them less than enthusiastic about the long-term consequences of increased dependency on tests as a means for allocating opportunities

Business · Economics · Political science · Politics · Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies

• Blacks and the Military

  Open Access•Derek Leebaert, Martin Binkin et al.•Journal of Policy Analysis and…•1982

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