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Dumbing Down the SAT
National Review Online ^ | March 25, 2002 | Stanley Kurtz

Posted on 03/25/2002 4:46:13 PM PST by xsysmgr

The very existence of intelligence differences in America is about to become a forbidden truth

s intelligence un-American? It didn't used to be. But the times they are a-changin'. The American belief in the fundamental equality of all human beings is our glory and our foundation. But American equality has always meant equality of opportunity and equality before the law. The problem since the Sixties has been that some now demand equality of result — and more. For many on the Left, even inequalities of intelligence and physical difference are now forbidden. Through gender-norming and the general degradation of standards, our armed forces have been pretending for years that the physical differences between men and women don't exist. The war may have changed that, as indicated by the Bush administration's reform of DACOWITS (the nest of feminists at the Pentagon that for a decade has undermined standards in the name of "gender equity"). But buried on page 10 of Saturday's New York Times (and in the second section of last Friday's Wall Street Journal) was news that the very existence of intelligence differences in America is about to become a forbidden truth.

Last year, Richard Atkinson, president of the nation's largest university system, the University of California, proposed dumping the SAT test. Atkinson justified the projected move with the claim that the SAT, as a measure of aptitude rather than achievement, was unfair to those who could maximize their potential through hard work in high school and college. But Atkinson's move was a transparent attempt to circumvent California's Proposition 209, which outlawed race preferences in admission to California's public colleges. (For more on this, see my "Academic Postmodernity & the SATs.")

Now, with Atkinson's proposal slowly but successfully working its way through the ruling bureaucracy of the University of California system, an intimidated College Board has announced a sweeping reform of the SAT, one that will turn it from an aptitude test into something much closer to an achievement test. This desperate attempt to head off a national stampede away from the SAT is a serious mistake. The feared stampede would probably never have materialized, and could in any case have been very effectively battled. More important, there is nothing wrong — and everything right — with colleges basing their admissions decisions, in part, on a clear measure of student aptitude.

College admissions offices already have measures of student achievement to work with — grades, and a wide range of achievement tests. Colleges do, and should, take these measures of achievement into account. The point of the SAT is to add something new and important to the mix — a test of general aptitude. An aptitude test actually works in favor of students who come from lesser high schools but have the potential to achieve at higher levels in college. By destroying the SAT as a measure of aptitude, all that is accomplished is the suppression of a real and significant dimension of difference among students. As usual, in other words, the truth is being sacrificed to political correctness.

The SAT's famous verbal analogies, for example, are slated to be significantly scaled back or cut out entirely. Why? Because those who know English as a second language are said to be disadvantaged by the analogies. They do better with vocabulary quizzes that rely on rote memorization. So the critical intellectual capacities revealed when someone is asked to actually compare and relate words instead of simply spit back memorized definitions, can no longer be measured for anyone — simply because we are afraid to disadvantage a few. The solution here is to return to an emphasis on English immersion for immigrants, not the destruction of a critical test for all Americans.

To measure achievement, the math portion of the test will now be significantly more difficult. The original SAT actually did not require a command of advanced math. Again, it was looking to see how well people confronted and manipulated mathematical challenges. But with the emphasis on aptitude gone, bright kids who might be able to master higher math if given the chance will actually be tougher to identify. Besides, math grades and math achievement tests already show who has mastered high level math. This is nothing but an attempt to manipulate the SAT test until the results come out the way the testers want them to. Since minorities tend to do less well on aptitude tests, the test itself must go.

No doubt, individual intelligence differences are in some measure heritable. But I do not believe that class or race differences on aptitude tests are genetically based. Certainly, researchers have never succeeded in disentangling the effects of early experience from test results. If poor or minority students test lower on the SAT's than others, the way to solve the problem is to improve the conditions of life for these children, not to pretend that aptitude differences among high school students don't exist.

The destruction of the SAT as an aptitude test is an epoch-making move. Reflecting this, the test itself will probably be renamed. (Since the "Scholastic Aptitude Test" will no longer be a reliable measure of aptitude.) But this epochal change is being slipped by the American public in exactly the way that the most controversial advances in affirmative action have been established in the past. Quiet executive orders and behind the scenes bureaucratic decisions are the strategies of choice for liberal elites, operating against the weight of public opinion, in the matters of racial preferences and gender norming. And now, a profound change in the meaning of the SAT has been buried in the middle of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. (The news pages of the Journal, by the way, are editorially quite separate from their conservative opinion pages.) And of course, instead of seeking out potential critics of the policy, the Times simply went for comment to Nicholas Lemann, a prominent advocate of affirmative action and critic of the SAT. This is a lesson in how press bias really works. Not only does the Times puff up stories on social changes that it likes by front-paging them, it downplays changes likely to arouse conservative opposition.

There was a time when Americans believed that finding and training the country's finest minds was in the national interest. Certainly, all American children ought to have access to quality education. But, ultimately, it is to our collective advantage as a nation to have a way of identifying students of high aptitude. And it is fairer to students themselves — especially those from lesser schools — to have a way of recognizing intellectual potential that has not yet come to the surface.

The irony is that support for destruction of the SAT test comes from a liberal elite that is itself the product of our educational meritocracy. Guilt about success combines here with a hidden craving for moral superiority over the benighted middle classes. Those in the middle — and many minorities as well — still believe in the principles of liberty and equality that created the meritocracy in the first place. But once again, the liberal elite, in a conversation amongst itself, is managing to turn our most basic values and practices inside out — with nary a peep from a public that would fight these changes if they were honestly told what is happening.

A proposed policy change from a powerful and extremely liberal university president (put forward with fundamental dishonesty about its real motives) brings pressure to bear upon the makers of the SAT test. In a panic at the prospect of losing the California system's business, the College Board buckles, and the only important national measure of student aptitude is destroyed. The news is buried in the middle of the weekend papers. In short, we have allowed a minority of Leftist intellectuals to commandeer our culture. Will anyone fight back?

Announcement: My pieces on NRO will now include an e-mail address for comments. I can't promise to answer everyone who writes, although I'll try to respond to as many messages as I can. I'll do my best, however, to read all of your comments.

Mr. Kurtz is also a fellow at the Hudson Institute.


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: calprop209
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To: toenail
You mean like both Adamses ?
61 posted on 03/25/2002 8:43:26 PM PST by nopardons
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To: PoisedWoman
Very interetsing story !

I agree with your post # 18, BTW.

62 posted on 03/25/2002 8:44:33 PM PST by nopardons
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To: xsysmgr
news that the very existence of intelligence differences in America is about to become a forbidden truth.

Where has he been sleeping for the past twenty (or was it thirty?) years?

63 posted on 03/25/2002 8:53:12 PM PST by mrustow
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To: nopardons
I will focus more clearly. The last election was a disgrace to our great country when we have son of a former senator running against the son of a former head of the CIA. I object to the first Bush's election on the grounds that it invites comparisons with totalitarian states that we should elect the former head of our intelligence service to be President. That election was almost as bad as the appointments of Ford and Rockefeller to President and Vice-President. Washington is a very incestuous place and as someone who usually votes Republican, I am very tired of seeing the names Bush and Dole again and again on our national tickets.
64 posted on 03/25/2002 8:57:23 PM PST by Biblebelter
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To: Red Jones
You're almost correct. Powell didn't go to school 60 years ago ; he isn't that old. What education he got, in Harlem, was far superior to today's public school and some private schools; not ALL private schools. It was probably better than what homeschoolers are doing today, as well, BTW.

How do I know this ? I know, because I am from N.Y.C. and my family went to school ( a public & private mix ) there and some have been in education, in one capacity or another,for over 100 years. At one time, getting good grades on the Regents exams ( state wide exams, which they have so watered down now, that they are just about useless, and STILL many can't pass them ) , were an automatic " GET IN FREE " card, to every ELITE college and univesity in this country. Though younger than Powell, I DO know what and how he was taught in grammar school. It wasn't anywhere near as rigorous, as what my grandmother did , in her day ; but it was still far superior to what is being taught in the vast majority of today's schools.

Instead of all of this feel good coddling, we need to go back to a point in time, when schools actualy taught subjects and demanded students learned ; or were left back.

65 posted on 03/25/2002 9:04:37 PM PST by nopardons
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To: nopardons
"Instead of all of this feel good coddling, we need to go back to a point in time, when schools actualy taught subjects and demanded students learned ; or were left back."

We need to go back to ending all government involvement with schooling.

66 posted on 03/25/2002 9:18:03 PM PST by toenail
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To: nopardons; Biblebelter
(nopardons to Biblebelter) Nobody ever accused you of being able to think rationally either.

Bush is president SOLELY because of his father and paternal grandfather ? What about the fact that his maternal great + granfather was also a president of the USA ? Perhaps it is because he is by nature and nurture predisposed to be an able, capable president .

How many millions of Ivy League grads have NOT been president ? Is that the failure of those schools ?

Reagan's father was a nasty , mean drunk and an abect failure. Bush's father was born into priviledge. All this means, is that America is a wonderful nation, where everyone has a chance to become anything ; still.

Your MARXIST class warfare has no place on FR !

Says the censor.

One of the things that not only makes many of those who proudly call themselves "conservatives" look like goddamned fools time and again, but more importantly does grievous damage to the principles the "conservatives" claim to champion, is their insistence on calling anyone talking about class warfare a Marxist. Folks at different points on the political spectrum hear such pathetic red-baiting, and figure, "Well, if they'll lie about that, you can't trust them to give you the correct time of day!" Then they decide, they'd better protect themselves against such dangerously dishonest or stupid people, and go either with the socialists or with some variation on Buchananism.

Everything I know about class warfare, was taught to me not by Marx, but by rich folk, and by those who were not quite rich, but who desperately wanted to be. I know of only two explanations why a grown-up would deny the reality of class warfare: dishonesty or stupidity. Which is it, with you?

67 posted on 03/25/2002 9:26:47 PM PST by mrustow
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To: jurisdog
Sorry, but vocabulary is not a sign of intelligence, its a sign of culture and upbringing. Unless and until the PARENTS and TEACHERS of the students that are scoring poorly on the SAT in groups are held accountable, I really have no problem with changing the test to measure objective indicators of intelligence (logic problems using plain english, and math, etc.)

The SAT wasn't designed to measure intelligence. There are many good intelligence tests for that, and some of them don't use written language at all.

The SAT was designed for one reason: to set up another entrance criterion for admission to an Ivy League university based on something *other* than ancestry and "legacy." The SAT was specifically designed to predict *good grades in the freshman year.* At a difficult school, high SAT scores will almost certainly translate into good grades freshman year. That's IT. It doesn't measure intelligence, or how much money you're going to make 20 years after graduation, or even what your final GPA at graduation will be.

If vocabulary and language expressions aren't important on a college entrance exam any longer, that probably says more about the dumbing-down of freshman level courses than the SAT's validity as a good predictor of who will do well in their freshman year.

68 posted on 03/26/2002 3:52:57 AM PST by ikanakattara
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To: Biblebelter
Washington is a very incestuous place and as someone who usually votes Republican, I am very tired of seeing the names Bush and Dole again and again on our national tickets.

I agree.

There has been a Bush or a Dole on every ticket since 1976, and it looks like it won't stop until 2016 or so. I can only hope that empty suit from NC, gets cut off before she can get a presidential nomination.

69 posted on 03/26/2002 5:30:15 AM PST by Orion
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To: xsysmgr
the SAT test

I loathe this practice of failing to mentally expand acronyms. SAT = Scholastic Aptitude TEST. Therefore, SAT test = Scholastic Aptitude Test test. Brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department. < /vent>

AB

70 posted on 03/26/2002 5:37:50 AM PST by ArrogantBustard
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To: Jeff Gordon
Teaching Math in 2000: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $120. How does Arthur Andersen determine that his profit margin is $60?

ROFLASCOMN!!!!!

71 posted on 03/26/2002 5:44:07 AM PST by ArrogantBustard
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