Abolish the SAT

For most high school students who want to attend an elite college, the SAT is more than a test. It is one of life’s landmarks. Waiting for the scores—one for verbal, one for math, and now one for writing, with a possible 800 on each—is painfully suspenseful. The exact scores are commonly remembered forever after.

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The pivotal analysis was published in 2001 by the University of California (UC), which requires all applicants to take both the SAT and achievement tests (three of them at the time the data were gathered: reading, mathematics, and a third of the student’s choosing). Using a database of 77,893 students who applied to UC from 1996 to 1999, Saul Geiser and Roger Studley analyzed the relationship among high school grades, SAT scores, achievement test scores, and freshman grades in college. Here is what they found:

Achievement tests did slightly better than the SAT in predicting freshman grades. High school grade point average, SAT scores, and achievement test scores were entered into a statistical equation to predict the grade point that applicants achieved during their freshman year in college. The researchers found that achievement tests and high school grade point each had about the same independent role—that is, each factor was, by itself, an equally accurate predictor of how a student will do as a college freshman.

But the SAT’s independent role in predicting freshman grade point turned out to be so small that knowing the SAT score added next to nothing to an admissions officer’s ability to forecast how an applicant will do in college—the reason to give the test in the first place.

All 2nd graders in California public schools are tested to see if they qualify for the gifted and talented program.

However, my special needs daughter has had her IQ tested on multiple occasions to see what progress she is making and what problems she is having. She’ll probably have a few more IQ tests before she is out of college.

IQ is not really as static as some people think it is. It can and does change over time.

When my daughter was 3, they thought she was mentally retarted because she couldn’t talk at all.

Around a 1 1/2 years ago, her IQ was at around 100.

However, we’ve been working on ways to increase her working (short term) memory, so I’m hoping her IQ goes up from there.

I think that a lot of smart people are successful because having a high IQ makes it easier to learn. I also think that most IQ is inherited, so smart parents know how to educate their kids.

However, low IQ children who have smart successful parents are different from low IQ children from parents who are not smart and are not successful.

Because my husband and I are smart, we have learned how to teache our special needs daughter. I am constantly on the computer researching different ways to teach my daughter, and it has helped. When the public schools said one thing, I questioned them (and I was right). When my daughter could not talk, I still managed to teach her the alphabet, her numbers, her colors, etc. I read to her every night when she was little. We also stimulated her by taking her to museums, parks, etc.

I would like to see a study of well-to-do, smart, successful parents with children with low average IQs and see how successful those kids are. I have a feeling the low IQ kids would do pretty well.

Charles Schwab is a good example of a person with a low IQ that has done very well for himself.

Here’s an interesting link:

http://www.dyslexia-adults.com/a49.html

No one below age 18 should ever take such a test.

If I had kids, i would not let them take such a test. My parents fought a battle over my little sister for such tests. They had their way. I dont remember the specific test. She was a few years younger than me. I was never presented with the test.

I don’t have kids. I would like to some day though. Actually I would like to 10 years ago, but have not yet talked a nice enough girl into doing that for me. It’s funny, when I was young and played around like there was no tomorrow, the available females were uncountable. I turned them all down because they were uncountable and tomorrow was so far away. Now tomorrow is here and my prospects have all evaporated. Getting old without kids or a spouse is not something I would wish on even a democrat. I am paying a price, there is no doubt.

Sorry for being so depressing, I just moved the last of an ex’s furnature out of my basement today. Since I live alone in a house without kids I’m treated as a storage facility by many, and a moving facility by even more. It looks like my days as desireable even in that capacity are now over.

I had a cousin that didn’t talk until age 4. He is perfectly normal now, probably in his late twenties and last I heard, engaged. Don’t let them pidgeon hole your kids. I don’t care how dumb they think your kids are, they don’t know anything. Kids are so adaptable and extremely absorbant...like a sponge. If someone tells them they are retarded, they just might take it as truth and grow up to be retarded. If someone tells them they are geniuses, that too might affect their outcome. Be very careful about this.

If you have a special needs kid, you may change your mind about IQ tests. We knew my daughter had brain damage from and MRI; The problem with the MRI is that it doesn’t tell you what what is working and what is not. The IQ test tells more information. It was very helpful in finding out what was going on with my daughter.

For example, she had a hearing test that came out okay, but we were always repeating things to her. The IQ test told us that she had working memory problems.

My kids know how I feel about IQ tests. I’ve told them how my old genius boyfriend flunked out of college, and another friend who was not “gifted” worked very hard and became a doctor.

Hard work and being smart gets you the farthest. However, hard work will get people much further than just being smart.

Since my comments on this thread were just pure venting, I did not expect much of a reply, let alone one of such excellence.

I have frequently advocated exactly the same thing -- spare the legitimate disciplines -- and bulldoze the rest of it.

It is a playpen for Leftists and a distraction to people -- few of them are 18-22 years old -- who really have discovered an interest in the humanities. That kind of education is a lifelong enterprise. The value added by the live performance of an actual professor -- when they don't leave it to the graduate assistants -- is negligible. How about all the carbon pollution we could avoid if we used the Internet, as you say!

And it is so corrupt. I read a long article in one of the serious MSM opinion magazines a few years ago pointing out what a small percentage of Ivy League students were admitted on genuine competitive merit.

In smaller schools with substantial sports programs -- like the Ivys -- a huge number of their admissions are athletic scholarships. And, of course, Title 9 means every legitimate male athlete has to be matched with a female, even if there is no legitimate demand for some of the sports offered.

Then, of course, there are the legacies, e.g., the Bushes, AlGore, John Kerry, endless Kennedys, etc. Then we have diversity admissions.

I can't remember the exact number, but it seems like legit admissions on academic skills were down around a third of students admitted at the elite schools.

And huge amounts of public money makes its way into the financing all of this at ludicrous prices.

And to top it off, it is nothing much more than the American version of a "class system." Many kids who pursue humanities and social sciences will never again do anything as magnificent as having been admitted to Harvard or Yale or Stanford. Fortunately, it does not guarantee them wealth and career -- as it does in France -- but it does guarantee them ~prestige~, membership in an elite club for as long as they live. State schools and second tier schools are not much better, but at least they deliver the equivalent product at much lower cost.

Then there is NCAA sports which is the unlikely bedfellow of all the abuses of the leftie faculties. It is sports, along with fraternity rings and pride of admissions and nostalgia for their youth, but ~especially~ sports, that keeps the alumni giving bucks and loyal to their schools in the state legislatures. There is nothing that the leftist lunatics on campus can ever do that will cause our perpetual fraternity brothers to look with a cold eye at the rot on campus. The pre-professional sports programs (which I enjoy) need to be trashed. Playing basketball at that level has nothing to do with getting an education.

And while we are at it, the programs that are in the twilight zone between the mushie-soft humanities and social sciences and the science, engineer, medicine, business and other useful courses also need to be gutted. I am speaking of absurd graduate programs awarding PhDs in such things as sports management. And endless programs in communications.

I am down with you, my friend. Bulldoze the quads and salt the earth.

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