<p>Redundancy testing
Charles Murray, erstwhile champion of the SAT, has changed his mind about the test -- and says it's time to scrap it</p>
<p>I would love to see his idea catch on. </p>
<p>He seems to be arguing for junking SAT I only as far as I can tell, rather than all SATs?</p>
<p>Having lived with the arguments pro and con for a while now, the ONLY defnese of the SAT I that I see is that it is the "only" viable way to validate top grades and rank of great students from "unknown" high schools. It's a way to say that their 4.0 or better really "counts." </p>
<p>Short of that, I believe the negatives of the SAT as it is currently used dramatically outweigh any positives.</p>
<p>I'm not sure that the SAT IIs add a lot to the picture either. If the SAT I doesn't really offer better info than GPA, then how do the SAT IIs offer better info than grades in the individual subjects?</p>
<p>Until they come up with a new barometer for measuring disparate schools and grading systems (because an A is not an A...), we are likely going to be stuck with the SAT for awhile, imperfect as it is.</p>
<p>
[quote=Boston Globe, quoting Charles Murray]
But the popular perception of the SAT as unfair and coachable -- even if that view is wrong -- "has a very corrosive effect."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's an interesting line of argument. I'll try to follow up the sociological research mentioned in the newspaper article about how much weight college admission offices give to SAT scores in making admission decisions. </p>
<p>After edit: Here's a question to the other parents posting in this thread. Do your children also take the SAT II tests (the tests called "achievement tests" in the newspaper article)? If your child takes two or three of those, is there any added value for your child in taking the SAT I?</p>
<p>Down with the SAT!</p>
<p>OK, I was feeling very rebellious a few seconds ago. But if the SAT goes, the ACT will be the only thing around. Then someone will find fault with that as well, and so the cycle goes on...</p>
<p>not clearly stated in the article, was that the UC study showed that gpa+achievement tests was better at predicting grades than gpa+SAT, and that the better predictor was statistically significant.</p>
<p>token: negative for my kids. However, for many in our district who are not native speakers, the CR +W is not easy. If Subject Test only, they take math-science tests only, if engineering bound.</p>
<p>Tokenadult:</p>
<p>My S took the old SAT and 3 SATIIs, including the SATII-Writing. His scores in math and writing were the same for the SAT and SATIIs.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, though, that only about 60 colleges require SATIIs.</p>
<p>The SAT may not predict GPA, but it does tell you something about a student's intelligence and abilities. Just a thought...</p>
<p>It does tell something about what their grades mean in English, and math high school classes. I think that it is necessary bc of the differences between high schools. Many people do not have the skills to score well on standardized tests, but I do think that As in advanced math and English classes, with a score of 500 in English and math on the SATs does shed light on what those grades might mean, which is not much.</p>
<p>"The SAT may not predict GPA, but it does tell you something about a student's intelligence and abilities."</p>
<p>To some extent. And as far as relative intelligence an abilities, I'd say to a very little extent.</p>
<p>Most people perform to the standard of where a bar is set. If a student knows that he needs to get, say, a 1400 in order to assure himself a place in an honors program or his dream university, and he takes the SAT and gets a 1410, chances are he's not going to go further. He won't take the test again, he won't prep for a higher score, he won't take the ACT to see if he does better.</p>
<p>OTOH, if he wants to go somewhere else that requires a higher score, he will do the prep, the repeat testing, the alternative tests. And chances are, he'll end up with a much higher score. Is he "smarter" than he was before?</p>
<p>If you tell someone they need to jump 3 feet, and they jump 3 feet, they'll quit jumping. If you tell them they need to jump 4 feet instead, they'll keep jumping until they do it.</p>
<p>Except, to take that analogy a little further, there are some kids who can only jump two feet, and no matter how much practice they do, they will never jump four feet. </p>
<p>That is what the SAT shows...and fairly well. One can prep to a certain level, but not beyond. A kid who scores 1410 unprepped is very different than the one who scores 1020 unprepped, even if both have A's in their English and Math classes.</p>
<p>doubleplay,
I think you are presenting for a false assumption that test prep can get a student to any level that they desire. While test prep clearly can help many, many students, there is an intellectual limit to how much beyond their natural ability it will take them. To use your language from above, not everybody can jump 3 feet (much less 4) and no amount of practice is going to get everybody to that level.</p>
<p>You're correct about some not being able...which is why I used the words <em>to some extent</em> and then an analogy of someone who would only have 100 or so points to be in the running for just about any university or honors program in the country. </p>
<p>I see it all the time around here...kids who have been dreaming of going to the state U all their lives. They know they only need to get thus and such a score, and if they do it, that's the end of it. No telling of where they'd end up if they kept trying. That's all I'm trying to say. I don't believe that on face value I can make a judgement of <em>who's smarter</em> between a hundred to two hundred points difference on an SAT, without further investigation. And who wants to, anyway?</p>
<p>Yes, I agree with the huge discrepancies (1020 vs 1420).</p>
<p>But is 1410 unprepped equal to 1410 after year(s) of coaching ? Do both students have the same intelligence and ability ?</p>
<p>marinpus,
I think we're both in agreement. My point was that SAT scores show relative intelligence only to some extent. It's not definitive in and of itself. There are many factors that enter into that score. </p>
<p>If students were somehow unable to prep, such as is the case for certain IQ tests, and if students could only take the test once, maybe twice, if students were all equally motivated and made the same effort to complete the test to the best of their abilities (so as to truly show what they're capable of)...then I'd agree that it might be a more definitive indicator of relative intelligence and ability.</p>
<p>Of course, it is clear that we should abolish the only test that has been calibrated since 1946. </p>
<p>Of course, we should pay close attention to the author the Bell Curve, and especially to his views on why there are differences between races. </p>
<p>Of course, we should abolish a test that commits the grave sin of demonstrating that the son of goat herder in Bhutan or the daughter of a coffee farmer in Vietnam could outscore the average scores of weatlthy americans, let alone score in the top 5% in English, which may be the foreigners' second or third language. Not the mention that we should most definitely abolish a test that could bring us the horror of a great SAT score emerging from an impoverished inner-city or a rural area. Don't we already know that "the poor are poor because they were born with defective, inferior genes." </p>
<p>Of course, we schould scrap the general SAT and replace it with the SAT Subject Tests. After all, the Subject Tests have demonstrated a great resistance to coaching! No, scoring high an the Math Level II is not influenced by one's mastery of the TI-89! Oh no! </p>
<p>Of course, we should applaud the decision and the undisputable hard science behind the decision by the UC to give increasing weights to the tests such as the Korean Subject Tests or other foreign language tests, and along the way thank the giant Samsung for their generosity of making this ever so important test available to all americans. Acing the Korean or Chinese tests is such a way to show one's preparation for college!</p>
<p>Of course, we should abolish all the national standardized tests and rely on the great commonality of the GPA produced by the thousands of high schools in the country and in the world.</p>
<p>And then what!</p>
<p>"After edit: Here's a question to the other parents posting in this thread. Do your children also take the SAT II tests (the tests called "achievement tests" in the newspaper article)? If your child takes two or three of those, is there any added value for your child in taking the SAT I?"</p>
<p>I think so. DD did quite a bit better scaled score wise, on the SAT reasoning vs. one of the SAT II's. Some coach for the SAT I's may have added 100 points, but her scores on the scholastic achievement tests over the last 10+ years have been consistent with her SATI "test taking ability" OTH, no prep for SAT His; we'd never even heard of them until we registered for SAT I's a month before. I figured it was supposedvto reflect what she was learning in school. Taken because VC's require them.The difference as big as 580 and 760. I'm still trying to figure at what this means. I don't think it makes sense for her to spend a lot of time studying for repeating a subject test if the original score is a better reflection of where she should be aiming for college. On the other band, if SAT I is a reflection of innate ability, and SAT II what she has been taught (small school without AP's), then "coaching" a better score might be appropriate. Added to all this is the dreaded "URM" question, and the fact that her highest score was for writing, which used to be a subject test, and while sometimes disregarded, I understand to have been a pretty important predictor in the UC study of "achievement tests".</p>
<p>I don't really understand the interest in dumping the SAT. No school that I know of solely uses the SAT to select students. It's just one tool of many. </p>
<p>I think it's important to remember why the SAT was developed - to find a way to indentify academically gifted students outside of eastern boarding schools - the primarly suppliers of IVY league students at that time. While flawed to a certain degree it has given opportunities to students lacking family petigrees and the prep school educations. Without a standarized test of some kind do we go back to the "Daddy with the biggest check book" wins?</p>
<p>I think the SAT has value in the overall package. Just not that it's the definitive last word (my words, not anyone else's) on a person's intelligence or ability.</p>
<p>Re post # 17</p>
<p>"OTH, no prep for SAT His; we'd never even heard of them until we registered for SAT I's a month before. I figured it was supposedvto reflect what she was learning in school. Taken because VC's require them."</p>
<p>Darn tablet! That was supposed to be "no prep for SAT II's".... "it was suppose to reflect"... and "the UCS's require them."</p>