Abolish the SAT

The American ^ | 13 July 2007 | Charles Murray

[skimask]

One of the requirements to gain admission to one of our nations Military Academies, (West Point, Annapolis, Air Force Academy, Merchant Marine Academy) you have to submit three SAT scores over a period of two years. Each SAT score must be higher than the previous.

[nmh]

Some kids do “freeze” under the pressure - no doubt but still it is not a reason to “abolish” an objective test. It appears your children are motivated and intelligent and it SHOWS regardless of tests. Your kids put allot into their studies and it shows - although not on the test and still they are accomplished!

I’ve heard about the “probation” system where they don’t score well but other factors let them attend - so there’s a good method to let them enjoy the fruits of their labor.

My daughter has been doing the S.A.T. since kindergarten. Tests don’t bother her. She works hard and has no fear of tests.

BTW, what is the difference between the A.C.T. and the S.A.T.. Her school doesn’t have the kids take the A.C.T. - just the S.A.T.. It pays to use a spell checker ... .

[RKV]

“The educational establishment may actually have more to fear from” achievement tests. Yep. Either you get the calculus problem right or you don’t.

[reg45]

Of course the SAT scores are not inflated as well.

Horsehockey! The SAT scores were inflated in the mid -'90s to "correct" for the fact that minority students (except for Asians) were scoring so poorly.

[SauronOfMordor]

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.

So this guy thinks that somebody with an SAT Math score of 400 has a chance of doing well in an MIT engineering class?

Murray, in The Bell Curve pointed out the fallacy. Yes, among students above a cutoff threshold of SAT, grades and achievement tests (which measure a willingness to work hard) are more important predictors than raw SAT. This does not mean that SAT can be dismissed

[RKV]

Which is to say you must learn to take written tests. Nothing negative about our military academies, but I do wonder about the validity of that specific requirement (3 SATs with increasing results). Taking it once with a high score, ought to be enough to assess your academic ability don’t you think?

[reg45]

BTW, Murray is a Republican.

WRONG: He is a Libertarian.

[Straight Vermonter]

You hit the nail on the head. Without SATs schools would be pressured to gives an A grade all the time. Heck, they already get a lot of pressure to do so now.

[SergeiRachmaninov]

Basically [Murray's] saying we now rely on three measures, and you can get to the same result by using only [two].

I have admired Murray's work in the past but, if you don't mind, I will take my queue from the largely successful strategy that the NRA has used in defending our Second Amendment rights: If I see a hair on the camel's nose brushing the bottom edge of the tent, I will attack it with fire, poison, machete and every other weapon in my arsenal.

I stand for no-bull$hit ~~testing~~ to hold both the educational establishment and students to measurable standards. The SAT may be superfluous, but keep your hands off any aspect of measuring results and upholding standards. In fact, I suggest that we introduce an additional test, of the same general sort, to build a bit more redundancy in the firewall against the complete collapse of standards.

I believe that there is no shortage of wasteful practices that might profitably be cut from the educational process. Why don't we just right now put out-of-bounds the "reform" of testing. Go reform something else.

[Old North State]

There is one point in Murry's analysis that I find dubious, that of the SAT's predictive capability. The SAT has become less predictive because most college curricula have been expanded and dumbed down so far. A body above room room temperature can get a high GPA in some of these cooked up academic disciplines.
College admission is the prize in a competition for scarce resources so there will be winners and losers, period, so the selection criteria must be as objective as possible. If the SAT is abandoned I fear more use of subjective criteria like 'life circumstances', which are intellectually meaningless.

[RKV]

The author of this article is the SAME Murray who wrote The Bell Curve.

[LWalk18]

You keep missing the point. The SAT I and the SAT II Subject Matter Tests are both objective tests. They equally correlate to college freshman grades. Murray’s point is that there is no point in taking both, and there are several reasons why between the two, the SAT II should be kept, and the SAT I should be abolished.

[bill1952]

Yeeeees.

How about that? Someone who didn’t cram for HS tests ends up learning from the mistakes made on them, and remembers those facts forever.

How about that?

Anyone else remembers the Osteichythes classification?
from 9th grade?

Cram for the test and forget it by Finals. What a concept - real learning...

Does this make the case for more and stricter standardized national testing methodology?
Or returning the SAT to it’s pre 70s state?

Why was it changed to begin with? To more accurately relflect... what?
It failed at that? - Change it back.

[shrinkermd]

The paragraph below is key:

...Did the pre-1994 SAT measure something importantly different from what the post-1994 SAT had measured? Don’t bother asking the College Board. The data for answering that question would require the College Board to reveal just how well the original and revised SATs measure the general mental factor g, the stuff of intelligence/aptitude, and the College Board does not want to acknowledge that the SAT measures g at all or, for that matter, that g even exists..."

Colleges, parents, politicians et al may want to avoid measuring or talking about "g" but the real world will continue to measure it.

I think Murray wants to be appreciated by all rather than accept the hard facts of human nature. Abolishing the SAT will temporarily mean more minorities in the Ivy League but, eventually, truth will out and best and the brightest will survive and thrive and the others will do less well.

[reg45]

And it would seem to be unfair if someone were sick and performing below their best on the last test.

[nmh]

“You keep missing the point. The SAT I and the SAT II Subject Matter Tests are both objective tests. They equally correlate to college freshman grades. Murray’s point is that there is no point in taking both, and there are several reasons why between the two, the SAT II should be kept, and the SAT I should be abolished.”

You may want to address this to RKV. He has a different take on this article.

It doesn’t matter to me if they take both or one.

[RKV]

Plenty of registered Republicans (like yours truly) have libertarian sentiments. Personally, if the Republican Party nominates McCain or Rudy I may have to vote Libertarian myself.

[NonValueAdded]

This article raises several questions that I'd love to discuss with the author. First, he is basing this on correlation with freshman GPA. The question is ... does the freshman year represent new teaching or is it now mostly remedial? If the latter, then of course the achievement tests would be the better predictor. Those who have mastered the material should do better the second time around.

But what about the sophomore year? Junior? Will the student make it to graduation? What utility does the reasoning test have there? That is a very important question to ask and answer before abandoning the SAT I. I think graduation prediction is more important when the taxpayer is footing the bill.

Also, the study was California-centric, no? Perhaps there was not enough grade-inflation variation to draw nationwide conclusion. Then again, SAT II testing does deal directly with high school GPA validation, at least for the subject areas measured.

There is also the firestorm in Florida over the FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test), with a concerted effort to drive a stake through it. Yes, the teachers test to it bus since it is standards-based and therefore the teachers are teaching to the standard, what is the problem? Not to go down that rat hole any further, but just consider that when you trash one standard test you run the risk of tipping over a string of dominoes.

[RKV]

Murray proposes other current objective measures rather than the SAT (e.g. SATII and AP). Basically, its a matter of using multiple tests to measure what is essentially the same thing. Why duplicate?

[gusopol3]

you know, thinking about it, that may be the value to the educational establishment, as a kind of "fail-safe" that you wouldn't be able to predict by statistics. I know he's gone through several scenarios of types of students that may combine mediocre/poor GPA's with high SAT's, but the SAT in and of itself does, on an individual transcript, catch the eye. My kids have had very liberal teachers, who, contrary to my day when teachers were more or less expected to check their attitudes at the door, have been advocates for political and social positions. However, I continue to see goodwill toward my kids in almost all, despite some pretty direct evidence that they don't share the ethos of the classroom discussions. On an individual, rather than statistical basis, educators of goodwill could be excused for seeing it as one more chance to enable a kid to reach their potential.