Two Professors Retake the SAT: Is It a Good Test?.

(See "Yes," by Robert J. Vanderbei, below) Even though I have worked as a college professor for 15 years, I decided last winter to take the SAT and ACT examinations that my students needed to enter the institution where I teach, Temple University. Why? After nearly a year of preparing my daughter for the examinations, I started to wonder if the existing tests actually provided a good guide to assess knowledge. A commission created by the National Association for College Admission Counseling recommended last September that colleges and universities move away from their reliance on the scores. The commission released its critique after evaluating the effectiveness or lack thereof of standardized tests for more than a year. After taking both tests, I couldn't agree more with the commission's recommendations. I found that the tests emphasized speed and stamina over knowledge, and they failed to provide an adequate measure of what a student might actually understand. The SAT comprised 10 sections that haphazardly whipsawed the mind from writing to reading to math. I started by writing an essay, then spent the remainder of the test zigzagging back and forth among mathematics, reading, and grammar. Just as I'd fallen into a mathematical groove, it was time to move on to the reading section. A second math section, or perhaps a grammar test, might follow a reading section. Moreover, I had about one minute to answer each question — almost no time for any form of critical analysis or contemplation. What went through my mind? Keep up the pace. The SAT essay question asked, "Is compromise always the best way to resolve a conflict? " The answer: Of course not! Ask African-Americans about the compromise of the U.S. Constitution that left them as slaves. Ask women about the right to vote. Ask the relatives of those who died in World War II at the hands of the Germans after Britain and the Soviet Union initially tried compromise with Hitler. The list goes on and on. Simply put, the question is inane. Further, it elicits an answer that often fails to include analysis of research and inclusion of data — two key components of critical thinking. This type of question fails into the category of asking a student how he or she feels emotionally about an issue rather than what he or she thinks intellectually. Moving on to the grammar section of the SAT: I teach writing and journalism, yet I found some questions were written so awkwardly — although they were grammatically correct — that I wanted to take a red pen to them and demand that they be rewritten. The math section was no less frustrating. Again, I had about one minute to answer each question. Speed was more important than analysis. While a few of the math questions were relatively straightforward, most of them were so convoluted that they seemed intended to trick me rather than to test my knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, or geometry. As some observers have noted, the section doesn't test a knowledge or understanding of math so much as how well one has learned "SAT math." Dana Mosely, a math teacher who has created a series of DVD's to tutor students for the SAT, has said that in an actual classroom he would never use many of his suggested methods, such as simple guessing by elimination, and plugging in the answers from the choices rather than performing the math to come up with the correct answer. The SAT has even created its own mathematical symbols that can only be anticipated if the student has studied SAT math. From the issue dated June 12, 2009