Ditching dreaded SAT analogies

Chicago Tribune ^ | August 11, 2003 | Chicago Tribune

[Recourse]

Ditching dreaded SAT analogies

Published August 11, 2003

Critics have charged that the SAT exam isn't fair to lower income and minority students, and that some of the test sections--particularly those dreaded analogies--aren't terribly good predictors of future success in college.

And because the loudest of those critics hailed from California--incidentally one of the biggest clients of the College Board, which administers the SAT test--the test was recently changed.

To get into many colleges in California and across the country now, class of 2006 applicants will have to take either the SAT I or ACT, as well as two single-subject SAT exams, such as in American history or foreign language. (Currently high school juniors and seniors take three single-subject exams.)

The revamped SAT I exam scraps the analogy section, mainly because University of California President Richard Atkinson argued the SAT did not test skills that college students use most, or skills that were part of the high school curriculum. And students who took private test preparation courses generally fared better on this section, fueling charges of a tilted playing field.

[Recourse]

I love the understatement here. "Many urban public school students aren't spending a lot of time crafting essays..." Many urban public school students aren't spending a lot of time crafting sentences, for that matter. If kids aren't are going to learn the skills necessary to take SAT analogies, we should just kick them out and put them in vocational school. At least they would get the skills necessary to open up the cash register at Burger King.

[mhking]

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[Lazamataz]

SAT Analogy Questions are to Intelligence, as:

A) Pigs are to Bacon

B) Fish are to Bicycles

C) OJ Simpson is to Homer Simpson

D) Modems are to Lollypops

[Vigilantcitizen]

"Critics have charged that the SAT exam isn't fair to lower income and minority students,"

Yeah, and high school football tryouts aren't fair to 5'7", 125 pound white boys named Kermit.

[July 4th]

aren't terribly good predictors of future success in college.

No test is a perfect predictor of how someone will do in college, med school, law school, etc. But at what point do we dumb down a test to the point where you need absolutely no knowledge to go on to a higher education?

[irish guard]

I am sure we will get some interesting fairy questions added now that we have that new "Queen" High School in New York.

[dead]

Many urban public school students aren't spending a lot of time crafting essays

Teaching writing is obviously not the job of our ethnic pride and unearned self-esteem factories.

[ClearCase_guy]

If kids aren't are going to learn the skills necessary to take SAT analogies, we should just kick them out and put them in vocational school.

I think the country would greatly benefit if vocational schools were seen as a respectable path. IMO, there is currently a measure of shame in going vocational and not heading off to a University.

Plumbing pays pretty well -- and it won't be off-shored.
Electricial work pays pretty well -- and it won't be off-shored.
Carpentry work pays pretty well (and can be creatively satisfying) -- and it won't be off-shored.

Auto Repair, Home-building, Interior Design, Landscaping, Cooking ... there are many good careers for men and women and many of them can be immune to recession or labor market fluctuations. But "Blue Collar work" carries a stigma, so we try to send everyone to a big University where they can study Anthropology and Political Science.

And if the "right people" are not going to Univerisites in sufficient numbers, we have to tweak the entrance criteria so that they can attend the University for a couple years before they drop out. How nice.

[Lizavetta]

I remember when they yanked the word 'regatta' from the test because minorities wouldn't know what that meant as it is a WASPish upper-class term. More recently, the example they used for getting rid of the analogies was 'snow is to drift', where the correct answer was 'as sand is to dune'. They couldn't use 'drift' because of all the minorities living in the Southwest who, because they don't live in an area where there are snowdrifts, they couldn't possibly know what a snowdrift was.

Which leads me to believe that they want you to be able to pass the SAT without knowing much of anything.

[Explorer89]

A) Pigs are to Bacon

I'm going with A.....but shouldn't it be phrased as "bacon to pigs"? Since bacon is a subset of a pig, and the ability to do an SAT analogy question is a subset of intelligence?

Or am I deliberately ignoring an attempt at sarcasm?

[VRWCmember]

SAT Analogy Questions are to Intelligence, as:

A) Pigs are to Bacon
B) Fish are to Bicycles
C) OJ Simpson is to Homer Simpson
D) Modems are to Lollypops

E) Thermometers are to Health

[dsc]

"University of California President Richard Atkinson argued the SAT did not test skills that college students use most"

Well, let's see: the analogies are a good indicator of intelligence and ability to think, which he says aren't the skills his students use most.

I believe it.

[Lazamataz]

Or am I deliberately ignoring an attempt at sarcasm?

E) Message is to Sarcasm.

[Explorer89]

Electricial work pays pretty well -- and it won't be off-shored.

Having just had a house built, I can attest....talking to our electrician, this kid couldn't have been more than 27 years old, and he was telling us about the house HE was building. Put ours to shame. This kid had to have been making a mint!

[King Prout]

I think you have misrepresented the purpose of the SAT.
It is not designed to directly measure intelligence, but is instead a fairly good tool for measuring proficiency in English and Math.

On the other hand, your "example" does show how intelligence can compensate for vocabulary in these multiple choice tests.
If you were attempting to criticize the SAT by deliberately creating a given in which the analogy is between subjects which are unrelated, the choices below should have no more than one set of unrelated subjects. However, the choices present three such sets. So, it seems you are presenting an analogy between related subjects.
One can winnow the given choices by removing from consideration all which present totally unrelated subjects. In this case, Fish+Bicycles and Modems+Lollypops. One is left with a 50/50 choice between answers A and C. One can winnow these further by looking at the strength of relation. That leaves choice A.
Though, in fact, none of the choices is a perfect paralell construction to the given. A more perfect construction would be "SAT Analogy Section SCORES are to Intelligence, as..." "A) Bacon is to Pigs." as that presents a construct of derivative preceeding ultimate source. But that's nitpicking. :)

I remember the SAT I took. It was a very well designed tool, measuring what it was supposed to measure.
I blew one whole part of the reading comprehension section, by ignoring the test's instructions. That essay dealt with atmospheric conditions on Mars - a subject I knew something about from my own studies. I skipped directly to the questions without even glancing at the given essay. Each set of answers to the various questions included one answer that was correct in the real-world sense, and those were the answers I chose. UNFORTUNATELY, the designers of the test had anticipated that there would be some folks like me out there. It was a trap. Remember - this section of the test was intended to measure my reading comprehension, NOT what facts I had stored in my melon. The essay itself was entirely non-factual, so the correct answers were NOT the ones based on real-world information but on false data presented in the essay. I was sooooo embarrassed when the test results came back. My folks, being non-PC, laughed their asses off while rubbing my nose in my error. I learned. Never again.

The SAT does exactly what it is designed to do. The only reason I can imagine why people would complain about it would be that they know damned well that it measures the skills it is designed to measure, and that they also know damned well that they will not measure up when they take it.

[Lazamataz]

The SAT does exactly what it is designed to do. The only reason I can imagine why people would complain about it would be that they know damned well that it measures the skills it is designed to measure, and that they also know damned well that they will not measure up when they take it.

F) Lazamataz is to Sucking Chest Wound.

[King Prout]

Just out of curiosity, how many times have they "dumbed-down" the SAT since 1987? I'd like to know what my circa-'87 score of 1470/1600 would translate to in today's numbers.

[King Prout]

meep?

[Lazamataz]

meep?

G) Meep is to Unintelligable Single Syllable Response.

[King Prout]

"meep?" is a timid inquisitive noise made by a terrified small vertebrate when a large predator shows interest in its activities.