Film Review: A “Standardized” Test, and a Nation, Exposed in ‘The Test & The Art of Thinking’

In this well-researched, compelling, and surprisingly human documentary The Test & The Art of Thinking, filmmaker Michael Arlen Davis takes on a Goliath of the education world: the SAT. The primary question Davis’s film aims to explore is the usefulness and validity of a test that has taken such a prominent place in American educational assessment. Davis explores the notorious exam through such lenses as history, pedagogy, sociology, economy, and democracy, without the documentary ever seeming weighed down by the sheer amount of education it offers. This film attempts to expose the complex and far-reaching behind the scenes world of a test that holds the potential to make or break countless students’ futures each year, asking audiences to question the assumptions we may have about the test so many of us have taken, but may have never really understood.

See the full piece here.