I’ve never been a fan of standardized tests, frankly I dislike them. Maybe it’s because I’ve had to drive all the way up to Shoreline to a testing center at 7:00am on a Saturday morning when I could have driven over the hill to Seattle Pacific University. Maybe it is the small cramped desks, the ones that have a chair with a miniature piece of wood attached to the side. Maybe it is four hours of staring at small one-millimeter fill-in circles and the constant smearing of lead on my hands as I feverishly fill-in the circles. Maybe it is the bland readings discussing a debate on the true meaning of a Renaissance painting or the “equilibrium of nature” or a book on sleep research that may literally put me to sleep (exciting stuff, right?!). Or maybe, I just think it is a flawed evaluation of one’s intellectual aptitude.
The SAT was originally designed to evaluate a college candidate’s readiness to move on to higher education. The test gives colleges an opportunity to see beyond a student’s grades, the rigor of their high school curriculum, and their extracurricular activities and compare applicants across the nation on a level playing field. College admissions departments perform what is called “norming grades” where they compare an “A” from one school, Seattle Prep, to an “A” from another, Ballard High School, basically assessing the rigor of the school’s curriculum. This may in fact be a worthy task, but they do nothing to address students who excel taking a challenging curriculum but do not excel taking standardized tests. A college may reject a student who has a stellar academic record, a laundry list of extracurricular activities and leadership but falls below the college’s minimum SAT score. Admission to certain colleges is highly competitive and these prestigious schools desire to have the test scores of their admitted student population fall within select ranges as this boosts their ranking on the plethora of college ranking lists. So, why would one of their admission counselor’s admit a student with less than a stellar standardized test score score?
The SAT caters to the elite with studies showing that SAT scores directly correspond to the financial status of the student’s family. Students in high socio-economic classes spend significant time and money on SAT test prep programs to boost their scores. And, while preparing to take the test should simply be reviewing algebraic equations or vocabulary, test preparation primarily involves learning how to take the test. The SAT is not an intelligence test; if it was, hours of tutoring and preparation as to how to take the test would not have such significant effect on scores.
The content of the SAT is highly debatable. While the SAT math sections are to “evaluate for college preparedness”, they test on material learned long before the students were even thinking about college admission. The math sections consist solely of Algebra 1 and Geometry; material high achieving students learned in middle school or their first year of high school. As these students prepare for college, they are taking advanced mathematics courses such as Calculus or Statistics, none of which is included in the SAT. Students must recall what they learned two or three years prior, much of which has not been practiced since then. The SAT reading section is also very contentious and tends to penalize slow readers. The questions test a student’s comprehension of long and short readings in a timed environment. Generally, slow readers receive low SAT critical reading test scores while in the class room environment they may comprehend far more than fast readers who perform well on the SAT. The essay portion of the SAT has been in hot debate over recent years to the point that it has become an optional portion of the test. Essay grades are based on mechanical design: structure (clear, organized sentences) and length. This system gives low grades to those who write with a voice or specific style.
Ditching the SAT would do much more than save parents money on tutoring and preparation programs. Most importantly, it would give students “TIME to pursue their academic passions, get a job, make an impact on their communities, write for their school newspaper, do high level research, and read for pleasure”.