In classrooms across the U.S. one day in 1901, close to 1,000 high-school seniors sat down to write in their bluebooks the answers to such questions as: "What are the main lines of Macaulay's comparison of Milton with Dante? . . . Define archon, ephor, demagogue, dicastery, tyrant . . ." These were the first questions, and the boys & girls were the first guinea pigs of a new testing institution: the College Entrance Examination Board.
Since then, U.S. students have become a good deal more familiar with "college boards." In the half century some 2,000,000 would-be collegians have suffered their way...