I have to give the figures by memorly but from the monograph The American Dream In Massachussets 2000 the statistics show over the last 10 years or so persons with less than HS diploma had their wages decrease by over 11%, persons with a HS diploma increased their wages by 1% and those with some college increased their wages by 3-4% and those with a BA or better increased their wages by 40%.
For good or ill, people who get an education are increasing their standard of living and those who aren't, on the average, are not. Other statistics in this monograph were that the upper income quintile worked four times as many hours in a year as the lowest quintile. Almost all the people in the top quintile were married, college educated and prone to have their families late.
Jobs that require real knowledge and skill need workers who have made a start at that in college. They then continue to build their knowlege base and skills via OJT. This has not changed.
Employers know the value of degrees from colleges. Certain colleges have certain degrees which are pretty worthless. Getting these degrees from these colleges is a waste of time and money.
Devaluing the SATs just means that colleges have to consider other factors - grades, jobs held in high school, the written essay, etc. The fact is that not getting into the most competitive colleges means jack s**t in terms of earnings.
So there are three classes of students who will have parents trying to take advantage of this "disabled category".
(1) Students who really are disabled.
(2) Students who's parents want them to go to the "best" schools".
(3) Students so lame that they can't get into college at all unless they use this advantage.
So what happens? Students in category (3) will flunk out of college - or get a degree in social "science", or journalism, or education, or some other ratbag degree from a 5th tier school. The fact that they used this "advantage" threatens no one.
Students in category (2) will be the lying, slimey weasals that fill corporate politics everywhere. Nothing new here.
Students in category (1) will be in the same boat that they are in now.
Absolutely true. And appropriate, I might add, since real life has time pressures, too. The SATs are all about mental quickness and comprehension, not profound reasoning ability or original thought.
I'd venture to guess that given twice as much time as normally permitted, average scores might be in the 1400 range. The math portion is 8th-grade math; you just have to know the quickest way to solve the problem.
Don't ask me why, but after lo these many years, I can still recall one math question from my SAT. A diagram of a 3-dimensional shape was shown; it looked like a squared-off armchair, and measurements in feet of all edges were given. The problem was to determine the volume of the shape. Well, just about anyone was capable of calculating the volume of the "seat," the "back," and the two "arms" of the "chair," and adding them to yield the total volume. Given 60 seconds, I'd guess 95% would have gotten the answer.
Problem was, of course, you didn't have 60 seconds to solve a single problem. Those with better cognative ability immediately recognized the shape as a cube with a smaller cube cut out of it. To them, the answer was apparent in a very few seconds: 5 cubed minus 3 cubed equals 98 cubic feet.
Relaxing the time constraints, or otherwise dumbing down the test, renders it nearly pointless, which is the aim of the egalitarians. Soon, we'll be like Garrison Keilor's Lake Woebegon, "where all the children are above average."