<p>I believe it to some extent. Your mind under a time constraint works very differently. Your mind is thinking about the relevance of the SAT and therefore does not completely focus on the questions it’s facing during the test. Probably a huge majority of people who get stellar scores get in some “calm” sensation once they start answering questions like it’s a walk in the park, and their logic gets in a nice routine. It’s like saying I can play tennis really well but when I get in a real match, I break down and start thinking too much. It’s all mental. You could answer and work out individual SAT questions, but when faced with many in a time constraint, you’ll falter.</p>
<p>Standardize testing is an easy way to exclude and prevent people from going to school. Nobody should be judged as inadequate because they can’t score high on a test.</p>
<p>I’m in the top ten of my class and my SAT scores are average, at best. Then there are kids in my school that scored really well and their grades really aren’t good at all…mostly because they’re lazy. I wouldn’t say standarized tests are really a good indicator of how someone is going to do in their career because you’re always going to have kids that are willing to work really hard and then there’s people that are lazy.</p>
<p>Reading through all this I’m disappointed how many people don’t realize that getting an A doesn’t mean much. It means you did the best your school affords but that certainty doesn’t guarantee any level of intelligence. Can you tell me an A at a public school in Newark NJ is equal to an A at Andover or Exeter? Of course not. While SAT may not be a perfect system it is at least a more level playing field than GPA.
And to endlesslight, yes, people should be judged on how they score on a test because that’s all college is. High school makes you think homework and quizzes and participation matter but in college to be honest most teachers will have a midterm, final, maybe one test and a paper. That’s it, your whole grade determined by 3 tests and a paper. If you can’t score well on a test asking you for middle school level skills you can not do well in college. If you get nervous or anxious before the SAT’s the same will happen for the finals worth 40% of your grade.
SAT’s are not about how you will do in LIFE but rather about how you will do in COLLEGE, and for that they simulate a pretty accurate testing environment. If you want to say you are a bad test taker, I won’t dispute that it’s possible, but I will say if you blame bad SAT scores on bad test taking you will be doing the same for the next 4 years because it’s exactly what college is about.</p>
<p>SAT scores are a predictor of college success but that does not mean that someone that does not do well on standardized tests will not be successful at college level work. How well one does on a standardized test is but one measure of predicting success in college. While differences in school quality can affect GPA, it does not negate the fact that someone with a solid GPA has worked to the highest level in his or her environment for 4 years versus someone doing well on a test lasting a few hours.</p>
<p>Oh and another thing, high scores on standardized tests are a useless predictor of success in college without the context of GPA. My son had near perfect test scores, but never gave a hoot about grades. He continues that trend in college.</p>
<p>Of course the amount of work you put into school makes a difference. However, as far as indicators go the POTENTIAL for success is better measured through standardized SAT’s than through schools where a teacher liking you or disliking you can make the difference between a 2.5 and a 4.0. Having a great GPA can mean you’re intelligent but can also mean you had good luck with teachers, did pointless extra credit, or were just not challenged, not necessarily that you worked hard. Having great SAT scores does however prove intelligence and college readiness.
In the case of your son this all means that he had the ability to do phenomenally but just didn’t feel like it.</p>
<p>Hi, I’m a student and the University of Wisconsin Madison, and I completely disagree with you. I understand all of the information taught in lectures very well, to the point where I have helped other students in the class to understand the material for exams. I take longer than average to compute problems. I have often done worse than the people I have helped. This becoming a common hindrance and is not at all due to laziness. I spend hours studying</p>
<p>I think it is a way to hide there lack of knowledge but want to save face.</p>
<p>I believe it, because I absolutely do horribly on timed tests that involve the memorization and regurgitation of facts and figures. I’m an expressive person by nature, and do much better on short answer responses in which I can explain my rationale for a response. Obviously it takes much more time to deliver a comprehensive answer than it does to circle T/F or A-B-C-D. And I actually perform worse on T/F and multiple choice questions versus short answer responses or essay assignments. Not everyone learns or processes information in the same way; it doesn’t mean they’re stupid, it just means that they take more time for some things versus the “majority” who rush through those fill-in bubble pages and don’t even take the time to really think about their answer.</p>
<p>I never took the SAT, ACT, or any standardized tests because I know I’d fail. But I get all A’s in my English and behavioral/social sciences courses because there is room for written expression and individual interpretation. I actually have what’s considered a math “disability” (they’re calling it that because math is a requisite for graduation that I won’t be able to do as well in – the very nature of the subject works in exactly the opposite way of how I process information). Unfortunately, the so-called No Child Left Behind mandate doesn’t allow for individual learning styles either; you pass English, math, science and now, computer engineering (seriously, w.t.f?) with flying colors or you don’t graduate high school and are reduced to toilet cleaning the rest of your life. </p>
<p>My mother was a brilliant and compassionate elementary schoolteacher before illness forced her to leave her job, years before she could accumulate benefits such as a pension or even SSI/SSDI. Now she can’t return to the workforce because she doesn’t know how to use a computer, and what are the tech-savvy 20ish schoolteachers teaching our young ones today besides how to point and click and surf Google for pointless crap? Nothing. And there’s little to no human interaction if they’re just playing with that stupid Microsoft paperclip or watching Dora on YouTube or doing XBox or “educational software.” She doesn’t “test well” either because now, so many of the re-certification courses have to be taken online through distance-learning programs offered by the state. And even the teachers have to show competency for the NCLB standards, which include math, science, and computer engineering. And our young kids aren’t learning anything from the teachers who graduate today, well, nothing really meaningful or worthwhile, and certainly nothing that allows for the individual gifts or strengths of the child (much less the teacher).</p>
<p>Like I said, I never took the SAT or ACT and was lucky enough to avoid the mandate of NCLB tests before they became a graduation requirement. So I’d say whether or not a person is a good test-taker doesn’t have any bearing on how intelligent he/she is or how talented a student. I also believe a lot of people who say they’re not poor test takers are probably lying in some way. If they’re not, they’re seriously misguided, because that kind of thinking (that it’s an excuse) is what put this whole standardized graduation disaster in motion. And need I remind us all of whose administration put these so-called “competency examinations” in place? The smartest man in the universe, George W. Einstein, just another curious monkey typing away madly at Shakespeare for Dummies!</p>
<p>I don’t test well at all. But at least I’m smarter than a redneck. ;)</p>
<p>“Not everyone learns or processes information in the same way; it doesn’t mean they’re stupid, it just means that they take more time for some things versus the “majority” who rush through those fill-in bubble pages and don’t even take the time to really think about their answer.”</p>
<p>I don’t understand your mentality that people who are good at standardized tests are “rushing” or that they “don’t even take the time to really think about their answer.” Scoring high on standardized tests and being “expressive” are not mutually exclusive, even if they happen to be in your case. Maybe they know when it’s reasonable to be expressive and what the questions are asking. This is hardly a deficiency. Doing very well on the writing section of the SAT requires you to write an essay as well as fill in multiple choice. Sure, the essay’s formulaic, but it does show that there are people (those who are most successful on standardized tests) who can work in both directions.</p>
<p>“I never took the SAT, ACT, or any standardized tests because I know I’d fail. But I get all A’s in my English and behavioral/social sciences courses because there is room for written expression and individual interpretation.”</p>
<p>Right, because “written expression and individual interpretation” are about the limitations of what we should be capable to do. Having skills in addition to that is a waste.</p>
<p>“And our young kids aren’t learning anything from the teachers who graduate today, well, nothing really meaningful or worthwhile, and certainly nothing that allows for the individual gifts or strengths of the child (much less the teacher).”</p>
<p>Erm… why? Because their teachers are competent in math? You really think that accounts for educational degradation? Young “tech-savvy” teachers are incapable of encouraging “human interaction?”</p>
<p>Of course test-taking abilities are a factor in how good of a student you are. If you excel at free response, then you get good grades on things that are free response. If someone is very good at both free response and multiple choice, then they are a more successful student than someone who is only good at free response. Different types of learning are not incompatible.</p>
<p>This whole notion of “if you’re not good at something objective, then you completely make up for it in something subjective,” is utterly ridiculous.</p>
<p>I think it might have to do with the quality of the high school and rigor of classes as well. I know people who go to okay high schools and maybe take 1 or 2 AP classes their entire high school career, but because they have a 3.8 GPA from having great work ethic and do well in their classes that they are smart. School is not a test of intelligence, it’s more about how good your work ethic is and how much you try with intelligence being second. They claim that they are bad test takers because they’ve come to the conclusion that they are smart because of the grades they get. Unless you have something like anxiety disorder, your test taking abilities aren’t a factor. It’s just how well you’ve prepared and how smart you are. Period.</p>
<p>@ notanengineer: *“And our young kids aren’t learning anything from the teachers who graduate today, well, nothing really meaningful or worthwhile, and certainly nothing that allows for the individual gifts or strengths of the child (much less the teacher).”</p>
<p>Erm… why? Because their teachers are competent in math? You really think that accounts for educational degradation? Young “tech-savvy” teachers are incapable of encouraging “human interaction?”*</p>
<p>Well, at least the math teachers I’ve had the misfortune of dealing with were very impersonal towards a lot of their students (myself included), specifically those who “didn’t get it” (and these teachers/professors were very black-or-white in their thinking, the stereotypically cold numbers geeks). Meanwhile I’ve had humanities and behavioral/social sciences teachers who were willing to sit down with students of all abilities and majors/programs and even make extra hours by appointment. 5-10 minutes tops the math/science profs would meet, with the students who dropped by just to ask about next week’s homework because they were going on vacation or on an all-day visit to MIT or something. Those students got A’s, of course, because they did all the homework ahead of time (and class participation was a drop-in-the-bucket grading factor); meanwhile, those who didn’t, couldn’t, never would, well, they suffered with Cs, Ds, “Withdrawn-Fail”…and I’m sure an ulcer or two (or three or four).</p>
<p>That said, I should clarify the statement about students not “learning”: I meant “they” (specifically K-12 students in the public realm) are all learning the same thing (or expected to) because teachers are being trained to “teach to the test.” And it’s all very black-or-white in that if you don’t get above such-and-such level, you don’t graduate. Three strikes and you’re out. Einstein flunked math in high school; Edison was expelled for being too inquisitive. I’m sure if Hemingway or Virginia Woolf – brilliant writers, both – were administered the SAT math section or the MCAS (Mass. Comprehensive Assessment System), they’d, well, probably want to commit suicide or something…</p>
<p>Thankfully, I avoided the standardized requirement by just a year. Used to be, if you didn’t complete your courses, you could go to summer school and re-take English or math or whatever you didn’t pass. Now with these standardized tests in the lower grades, there’s a time limit, a fixed number of chances, and if you don’t make the cut, you’re SOL. Kids (and I mean kids, the K-12 set) aren’t “learning” anything but how to memorize a list of facts and figures. They’re learning to Google rather than think creatively and find innovative solutions to problems. Rote memorization doesn’t help you to think outside the box; nor does Asking Jeeves or posting on Yahoo! Answers make you a well-educated person.</p>
<p>Nor is everyone is going to latch onto everything and pass under rapid-fire circumstances. I could easily learn the full text of Romeo and Juliet and perform a one-woman show with gusto, but try as I might, I’m just not ever going to “get” mathematical formulas or scientific theories. Likewise, a math-oriented (“left brain”) student probably might not do as well in a Shakespeare course but would excel in calculus or trigonometry. We live in an era of soundbites, Tweets, and time-compressed snippets. President Obama wants to have longer school days? For what? “Is our children learning” anyway since Curious George took his monkey business to the Department of Education?</p>
<p>So I disagree with the cookie-cutter approach that the young “tech-savvy” teachers are forced to use with their students, and whose teachers probably used it with them (the initial guinea pigs for the standardized K-12 objective). And I think there should be allowances for alternative assessments and PEL (prior experiential learning), in the K-12 system and in post-secondary education. Test-taking “abilities” only measure your “ability” to 1) memorize and 2) perform well under pressure. And not everyone is good at that; it’s not about being well-prepared or smart, it’s about one size not fitting all.</p>
<p>Test-taking anxiety is a form of performance anxiety; it may or may not coincide with or be exacerbated by a preexisting anxiety disorder. But it falls under the same category as stage fright and (as much as I cringe at typing these words) premature ejaculation. A person is no less talented an actor/singer/dancer if they freeze up on stage (nor any less talented a – ahem – “performer,” about the latter). So in speaking of one size not fitting all, I guess based on that criteria, one (me, I guess) could also argue that…size doesn’t matter! :D</p>
<p>[Yahoo</a> Good News (Susan Ohanian Speaks Out)](<a href=“Yahoo Good News! - Homepage: Susan Ohanian Speaks Out (Susan Ohanian Speaks Out)”>Yahoo Good News! - Homepage: Susan Ohanian Speaks Out (Susan Ohanian Speaks Out)) Massachusetts HS grad with Down syndrome denied college acceptance for not passing the MCAS
[Global</a> suicide rates among young people aged 15-19](<a href=“http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1414751/]Global”>Global suicide rates among young people aged 15-19 - PMC) Over-pressured students are committing suicide at an alarming rate</p>
<p>I always thought I was a “poor test taker” - then I purchased one SAT study guide, memorized the entomological root of around 25 words, and timed myself in how long it would take to write an essay. After studying for three hours a day for one month I took the SAT - earned a score of 2240!</p>
<p>Honestly, you cannot leave one stone unturned. For me, this was timing, so I worked on this ad nauseam. I always thought I was a "poor test taker’, but it turns out that I had simply never worked out my weaknesses before.</p>
<p>I don’t believe it. But that’s just me. I am usually nervous right before a big test, but once its in front of me all the anxiety and everything else goes away and I’m in a zone.</p>
<p>In my opinion, such excuse is actually valid. Myself is a HORRIBLE test taker, especially on the SAT and ACT. I practiced on every single weekend and free weekdays before taking those and still got low scores. Why? I get SO nervous that my stomach starts to grumble, hands shake, and sweat. I dunno why. Even at school, my test scores are “eh” though it’s getting better and I know all my materials. I mean ALL. Most of my friends got a 34 on the ACT and 2200 on the SAT but I’m much better at math and reading than they are. Yet, my scores are stuck at around 23 and 1700 -______-;; Oh, and usually, for me at least, the most common reason behind poor test taking is time management.</p>
<p>This is an interesting (and old) thread…</p>
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<p>Based on your lack of grammar and mediocre sentence structure I can safely say that your low scores are not the result of being a bad test taker.</p>
<p>Most of the people who say they’re bad test takers are not, but there are some exceptions. Everyone knows the kid with a 4.0/1800, and the kid with a 3.5/2320. I know one girl who is very smart, but right before she took the ACT (I was in the same room as her) she just about had a full on panic attack. Her face turned red as a tomato and she started hyperventilating. I don’t think she did well on that test. On the other hand, there are plenty of students who get good grades by studying for days, seeking help from others, or even cheating. This skill set simply doesn’t translate to test taking, so they are essentially unskilled at taking the standardized tests (different from being a bad test taker).</p>
<p>I think it’s bs, at least at my school where every class is super easy and it takes no skill to have a 100+ gpa. Our valedictorian got a 1500 sat. Come on. Poor test taker my butt. If our school was much harder (which it should be for an ib school), ranks would be so different. </p>
<p>Sent from my SPH-D710 using CC</p>
<p>^ LOL, a 1500!? You must be able to sleep through classes and get As. Our last year’s val got like a 2320+, and she didn’t even have a perfect unweighted GPA.</p>
<p>Haha. Dfree. Your ■■■■■ post made my day</p>