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First, anyone who decides merit based upon SAT scores, these days, is shallow. It is a standardized test rigged to reward those who are schooled according to a mediocre if not backward standard of education.

I'm not sure what you are saying. I know three homeschooled kids who virtually aced the SAT. One who did. And many more who are national merit finalists (PSAT performance)). These kids and many more were taught by my wife to write (see Andrew Pudewa's program (Institute for Excellence in Writing). The truth is that form is critical to successful writing.

I do agree that this socialist led state is NOT a meritocracy. It is the age old system of helping friends and harming enemies. Not merit, favor.

This calvinist tac is ridiculous. (I'm sick of this filter). Kids do well because they work at it, not because they've been necessarily gifted. I know many gifted kids who just won't do the work. And that is a formula for failure.

No one could believe more strongly than myself that the ability to think well goes hand in hand with the ability to write well.

I have always had concerns with the SAT as a test of grammar and writing, even before the present essay test, because classical forms of grammar that have been dropped by the ignorant Ebonics modern crowd are considered wrong (the dropping of the subjunctive form in English is but one). More recently I have discovered how the SAT essay portion is actually graded and I was appalled. Grading is based upon the rigid applications of "accepted" model sentence structures and accepted model composition forms that would serve the 1925 secretary well in the composition of a business letter, which is a creditable standard of writing, but not a particularly high standard, except measured against the excrescences of what passes for modern writing.

But none of it has anything to do with excellent writing, compelling writing, writing that invites the reader to want to read the piece, and, as I discovered in a colloquy with an experienced SAT essay grader, the writings of a Hemingway or a WF Buckley would not do well. They don't follow the set format.

And so we exult not in merit, but in mediocracy.

No one could believe more strongly than myself that the ability to think well goes hand in hand with the ability to write well.

I have always had concerns with the SAT as a test of grammar and writing, even before the present essay test, because classical forms of grammar that have been dropped by the ignorant Ebonics modern crowd are considered wrong (the dropping of the subjunctive form in English is but one). More recently I have discovered how the SAT essay portion is actually graded and I was appalled. Grading is based upon the rigid applications of "accepted" model sentence structures and accepted model composition forms that would serve the 1925 secretary well in the composition of a business letter, which is a creditable standard of writing, but not a particularly high standard, except measured against the excrescences of what passes for modern writing.

But none of it has anything to do with excellent writing, compelling writing, writing that invites the reader to want to read the piece, and, as I discovered in a colloquy with an experienced SAT essay grader, the writings of a Hemingway or a WF Buckley would not do well. They don't follow the set format.

And so we exult not in merit, but in mediocracy.

No one could believe more strongly than myself that the ability to think well goes hand in hand with the ability to write well.

I have always had concerns with the SAT as a test of grammar and writing, even before the present essay test, because classical forms of grammar that have been dropped by the ignorant Ebonics modern crowd are considered wrong (the dropping of the subjunctive form in English is but one). More recently I have discovered how the SAT essay portion is actually graded and I was appalled. Grading is based upon the rigid applications of "accepted" model sentence structures and accepted model composition forms that would serve the 1925 secretary well in the composition of a business letter, which is a creditable standard of writing, but not a particularly high standard, except measured against the excrescences of what passes for modern writing.

But none of it has anything to do with excellent writing, compelling writing, writing that invites the reader to want to read the piece, and, as I discovered in a colloquy with an experienced SAT essay grader, the writings of a Hemingway or a WF Buckley would not do well. They don't follow the set format.

And so we exult not in merit, but in mediocracy.