The practice of measuring people with the same instrument scored the same way, to rank and sort them at scale — and the long argument over what such tests actually measure and whether they open doors for the talented or mainly reproduce the advantages students already bring
A test promises to be fair by treating everyone the same: same questions, same clock, same scoring key, no names attached. That promise is the whole appeal, and it is also the problem. A single instrument applied to millions of unequal lives does not erase those inequalities. It measures them, then hands back a number that looks objective. The argument over standardized testing has run for more than a century because the fairest-seeming part of the test is exactly where its biases hide.