Abolition of SAT/ACT

Before I get into discussing your particular contentions, I should warn you that I am going to agree with you a lot more than you may have thought. I think this is primarily because I take issue with your conclusion, not necessarily your premises. I find that the idea of "abolition" in regards to the SAT is not only un-necessary, but at the moment, rather deleterious. I will set up my thoughts, then respond to yours. First, I would like to make it know that both I and my wife are middle school teachers, and we have a significant amount of fiends who teach at various levels. While this by no means implies I have the right answer, I do believe my experiences and observations provide legitimate evidence. This evidence must be taken in light of the whole body of evidence, however, not as the nail in the coffin of my argument. From my time spent in the eduction system, I can assure you that it is not only tests that have been standardized, but grades as well. Teachers are not allowed to score missing homework lower than a "50," teachers here are required to give a re-test if a child does not like his/her grade, and teachers are put under heavy scrutiny if they challenge their kids enough to ensure that only a relatively small portion are earning "A's." Learning requires dissonance, and the schools are not providing that in many ways. "A's" are expected. Since there is nothing above an "A," there is no differentiation between the large amounts of students who find themselves in what should be an exceptional place. For this reason, colleges are unable to look at grades alone to determine admission. They don't want to take the chance that someone got all "A's" but came from a lax school. Colleges have their own standards to live up to. Their accreditation and ratings often hinge on the success of students as well as retention. Not only is student success vital for college accreditation, it's vital for the institution financially as well as for their reputation. When someone goes to Harvard, Harvard wants to make sure that they are getting a student who will succeed. This is not only for Harvard's good, but for the good of the student. Why would you want a kid to flunk out and waste all that money because they weren't prepared? Colleges are as diverse as the secondary grading systems. However, each college knows what standards it needs to uphold for entry to ensure that students succeed, and the colege's business is preserved. To give an analogy, going to college is a lot like taking out a loan. One generally has to have a certain amount of capital to get approved for a loan. So when I go to buy a house, I put down an indication of my ability to pay for that house and my commitment to making those payments by making a down payment. If I can't do that or if I have a bad credit history, the bank is not going to put themselves on the line for my sake, nor should they. We all see what happened when banks took on clients they couldn't back. I think the same thing is true with the SAT. The SAT is an indication that you have the intellectual capital required to succeed. Do people still go belly-up on loans and in college? Sure. But there has to be some universal standard whereby we can assess the situation to act reasonably. Before I address what I agree with, I do want to point out one particular point of contention. You mention that SAT scores aren't predictors of success, but from my understanding, the data disagrees. There is a great analogy given at the bottom of page1 of the link I will post at the bottom. Basically, if Harvard only accepts kids with SAT scores above 1400, there will be a certain percent that fail and a certain percent that excel. Since some fail, you would argue that the SAT score wasn't a good predictor. However, what if the failures of Harvard went to a community college? Chances are, they would probably pass (assuming the problem at Harvard was intellectual). SAT scores predict very well the ability of people to perform in the minor league colleges or the major league colleges. But comparisons made within those leagues cannot be done, which is what you are referring to when saying SATs are inaccurate. This is a category erro. Now, as you have pointed out, there are significant problems with the SAT, all of which I would concede. However, my contention with your argument is still the idea that abolition is not the best route to take at this time. While the SAT may be imperfect, it is quantifiable due to it's universal nature. Everyone is taking the same test, so we can begin to see patterns and adjust. Look at your example of females scoring 26 points lower. An easy temporary solution to that is to add 26 points to all of the female scores. Why? Because we can quantify the difference. Obviously a bigger fix needs to be done. We can't just go around throwing points at everyone. There is something flawed with the test in relation to many different groups. But how are the school systems any different? Depending on your teacher's teaching style, depending on your school's philosophy, and depending on your school's grading system, there will be huge discrepancies in grades. Schools are just like the SAT in that they are based on the majority and they have a set goal in mind that they expect everyone to ascribe and adhere to. But again, the major difference is that with the SAT, you have a more universal comparison system which is more fair than looking at grades, since you can quantify it. While the SAT certainly has problems, and while I couldn't agree with you more as to their big business mentality (I had to take 4, $80 tests to get my teaching license), we can't just abolish the SAT. The ineffectiveness of the SAT should spur us on to revise it to make it more fair, and it should spur on colleges like Wake Forest to find alternative means of accurately surveying entrants to their college, and other companies and colleges to create more accurate tests. While this big picture may involve the abolition of the SAT as it fails to compete with its more accurate competition, it does not involve abolishing it at this moment, or giving up on revising it, and other tests like it to make the system more fair. Above all, I think the necessity of something like the SAT shows us that the root problem is the institutions of learning themselves. I am all for holding students to a high standard, but schools can't do that until parents are willing to allow their children to experience dissonance. Until the educational institutions change, however, there will be a need for the SAT, or similar contemporaries. I'm looking forward to your response