The article “might” be interesting as long as one goes beyond the drivel about the SAT. I happen to think that Lani might have scored more points had she made the effort to find a question that is more representative of the SAT. Fwiw, the question she used could be solved by a middle-schooler with a minimum qualification of reading comprehension and mathematical ability.
Oh well!
If you can get beyond the SAT non-sense, you will hit this gem:
Quoting Andrew Ferguson for an insight on how the USNews rankings work? Heavy reliance on the SAT scores? Might as well have stated that the rankings give many points to the admission rates! And then using Sarah Lawrence’s MTM for an analysis?
Oh my!
PS Perhaps the author should have made up a purported SAT question based on this information:
What if the test-optional colleges were to sue the US News & World Report for libel? After all, USNews admits they use fake SAT averages for the schools which don’t submit scores. Thus, they know it’s not true, and they know it’s misleading to the consumers of their product.
It would be more appropriate for USNews to list the score-optional colleges, rather than assigning them a fantasy SAT score. Bob Morse may believe whatever he chooses to believe, but when he publishes false data, he’s knowingly publishing a lie.
xiggi, I really want to understand what you are trying to say, but I’m not getting it from what you wrote. Too much inside baseball, maybe? What’s wrong with quoting Ferguson and Myers?
Is your point that standardized test scores are only responsible for ~8% of the USNWR ratings? That may be true, but in the fat part of the bell curve – both for colleges and for test scores – I bet 200 SAT points, even if all other things are equal, represents some difference in numerical ranking that will look pretty meaningful to the masses.
@Periwinkle, libel? How? It’s their ranking system and they can jig it up however they want. And plenty of people want to be mislead. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t rely on the USN rankings so heavily.
Not to mention that the test-optional schools probably are going that route in part to make their test scores look artificially better. After all, if the purpose is to not rely on test scores, they could just ignore the test scores submitted.
I am not sure what you meant with the baseball reference, but allow me to bring some added clarity to what I wrote earlier in rather clear terms. So here we go:
I am not sure what was unclear in my previous posts, but I HTH,
I also think you are missing some fairly important things Guinier is saying by concentrating on this kind of minutiae.
Perhaps, JHS, but I tend to look at such articles with two lenses. I want to read the introduction and the conclusion to understand the nature of the message. I also want to see what type of sources are used to ascertain if there is a new angle or some new twists that have not been brought up to date. What is your reaction when you review a legal document that is relying on factual inconsistencies and happens to quote fictitious decisions or the “wrong” law.
Should I overlook the fact that the author relies on a clear poor understanding of the SAT, the USNews rankings system, and relied on uneducated or biased sources to support her own viewpoint?
Forgive me for taking a harsher view on people who also include something along the line “I know. I am a professor!” and pursue to show how she confuses facts with opinions, and relies of faulty assumptions. To put il mildly, if you want to convince me that your arguments have some validity, start by showing why I should pay attention to what the “bosses” of SLC or Bard think about the SAT and perhaps have the integrity to recognize that such people are outliers and do not have the monopoly of knowing what is best for everyone.
Sigh. “Inside baseball” refers to arcane knowledge and concerns shared by a small coterie of experts but not particularly comprehensible or meaningful to outsiders. Not everyone knows that “Andrew Ferguson” is code for “long on humor but short on facts and real understanding,” or that the president of Sarah Lawrence “tried to outsmart the system and hoped to have her cake and eat it, too.” Even with your expanded explanation, and a fair degree of sophistication in these matters, I still don’t know exactly what you are referring to. I haven’t read Ferguson’s book, and I don’t remember the details of any specific Sarah Lawrence proposal.
On the other hand, I am confident that Lani Guinier understands elite education and testing pretty darn well. She’s a Radcliffe alumna and second-generation Harvard professor who spent the early part of her career doing school desegregation litigation with the NAACP Inc Fund (and whose mother taught high-school English for years). She has lived at lot of what she is talking about.
The libel issue is complicated. If US News was actually publishing a reduced SAT score average falsely as part of a report on a school that would be unfair. But it sounds like what they’re doing is simply downgrading a school’s ranking as if it had an SAT average that was lower than its peers. To me, that’s a little silly but ranking systems are inherently subject to these kinds of arbitrary measurements. If they wanted to, they could flat-out say that not requiring the SAT cuts your ranking in half and it wouldn’t be some kind of illegal act. I could be misreading that though; the article is a little dense. The fact that some people are so slavish to those rankings is more like a character flaw than anything else.
As far as the thrust of the article, I’ve always wondered if there ever really is a college admissions scheme that does not favor the wealthy in any way. The article talks about how people can spend $35,000 on SAT prep and letter writing, but pretty much any other way to evaluate a student can be influenced by family wealthy. Extracurricular activities cost money; either directly, or in terms of time that you’re not spending working to earn a living. Living in a better school district can be expensive; transferring to a magnet school is not always easy or practical. Universities like Harvard don’t have to have any intentional bias towards anyone, because most of the obvious predictors you might think of are influenced by affluence.
The article seems about to discuss the author’s proposed approach but either I missed it or it wasn’t included in the excerpt.
Well, one learns every day. Am I guilty for having missed the Inside Baseball reference. May I assume that we are both guilty of … not knowing something? For the record, I am surprised that an astute observer of this site such as yourself did not recognize the Crazy U (Ferguson) or SLC background stories as they were amply discussed on these shores. On the other hand, I do not think that I should worry about being able to recognize shoddy “research” or dubious sources because I happen to know more of the issues presented as … facts. No matter how we slice it, the author looked at one side of the debate and ran with it, and this without bothering to ascertain if the original stories had been challenged or debunked.
For the record, you may safely assume that I am not oblivious to Lani Guinier’s background and quite familiar with her positions and academic background. And, for that matter, her background in itself elevates the bar when she writes about subject with purported authority. Should one hesitate to criticize the shortcomings (as in this article excerpted from a book) of an author because of a competent career in matters not necessarily closely related? Should we not expect from people in high positions to be more selective in their research given the high pedestal they might preach from?
In the end, the shame of all of it, is that as you said the attention to minute details (minutae) might detract from a message worth listening to. Unfortunately, there are times that both are hard to dissociate if not balanced with a large dose of correct facts.
On a concluding and personal note, would you not have liked to hear how BENEFICIAL tests such as the SAT can be for the disadvantaged? Would you not have liked to hear a few voices that hold the opinion that a student from the deep South who happens to attend the darn awful schools that are so common in our public system of education might get more “bang” from his 2100 SAT than a kid from Manhattan who prepped his way to a 2320?
Are there no stories how minorities landed at HYPS on the basis of a better than average showing on test scores that was reviewed accurately in its context? Seems to me that the author might have had something to say about that!
And, as a last reference, take a look at the last lines of this story:
It might help understand where I come from on this issue, and on meritocracy and AA in general!
Whomever the mystery person is who spent $30-35k on my son’s SAT/ACT tutoring, and did said tutoring while nobody in the house noticed (and somehow pulled it off without him having any more recollection than a handful of practices tests), thank you very much!
I really appreciate it, but don’t try sending me a bill, we are not rich.
ETA: Oooh, and I just realized, you must be the same person who tutored him to the same percentile score on his 10th grade PLAN, 8th grade Explore, and all grade school CogAT, Iowa, etc. tests. Thanks again!
ITBS??? 
Home sweet home @YZamyatin
I know I am in the minority here on CC b/c I think standardized tests are a poor measure of academic merit. But, we live in the educational minority to begin with b/c we believe what we offer our kids via homeschooling is vastly superior to what is offered in ps. We eschew teaching to the test, multiple choice testing,surface-oriented education their entire lives, so when a 3 hour test with questions that can be answered in seconds becomes the cornerstone of academic background and abilities, I roll my eyes. We give the test a nod by doing minimal prep and having them take them b/c it is a hoop that has to be jumped through. But, I consider it a hoop and not a judge of academic merit.
[entering rant 
]
Therefore, I agree with the article bc I don’t get the testsocracy mentality myself. When it is easily demonstrated that test taking strategies can significantly raise test scores, what the tests measure has a lot to do with testing taking and not test content. I also agree that the sample question was a ridiculously easy question. However, none of the questions on the SAT are truly challenging in content. They can’t be. A truly challenging test would require time to analyze a problem, set it up and solve. You can’t solve those types of questions in seconds. Give kids an AoPS type challenge question and if they can solve it, the entire math section of the SAT becomes meaningless.
As CB produces Springboard and the SAT aligns with the content found within that curriculum, it will be interesting to see how the test scores of Springboard users compares with other curriculum users. I think it is a HUGE conflict of interest that CB is producing a curriculum. http://springboardprogram.collegeboard.org
As time progresses, if the tests become Common Core aligned to specific content vs. specific skills, my kids won’t be taking them. I refuse to dumb down our academics to fit the profile of a standardized test. We will wait and see if their real merits matter.
I have had kids reading The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost in 8th grade, studying multiple foreign languages, and graduate with credit for multiple 300 level university courses with LOR from professors stating that they are the someof the most gifted students they have encountered in their entire career. That is academic merit worth our time and that is where our focus will continue to be. If it limits them to applying to test optional schools, those institutions will be lucky to have them.
[/rant off]
I feel lucky b/c I have the perspective of having btdt and have successful adult children with fabulous careers. I have confidence in what we do b/c my kids have all been at the top of their class. I feel for parents who are at the mercy of the system and are clueless about the big picture of what it all means.
You do not have to love, like, or believe in a test to convert it into an asset. This site used to be honored by the presence of a successful homeschooler. His daughter earned the sobriquet “Bubble Queen” as she parlayed her superior education into a talent to pick the right answer on a test that did not measure the depth of her intellect. What this “waste” of a Saturday --I assume it was one-- helped her “vouch” for the rest of her education. Although she could have probably relied on LOR, other tests, and perhaps a slew of other accomplishment, the SAT offered an easy to digest and understand yardstick when the admission process started, including the securing of merit money.
Right or wrong, the SAT offers such opportunities to students who do not fall into the precise measuring blocks of K-12. If the SAT is considered to be part of a dumbed down test, we ought to look with equally harsh eyes at the K-12 realm that delivers the student who have the hardest time to surpass the centered average of 500 and need frequent “revisits” to keep the average at 1000 or 1500.
In a same vein, students who are not blessed with great schools or stem from a disadvantaged environment can rely on the SAT to become one of the strivers that are sought-after by the best schools in the nation, and this in a “better” way than the GPA might show, as those animals tend to be manipulated upwards through curves or via the delivery of a regular supply of red apples.
This opportunity exists for you and your kids (or has existed) and does not require much in terms of investments and efforts, and especially so if the test is a compendium of trivially easy questions. Nobody has to like the darn thing or believe it could not be transformed into something that is much better and relevant, but the pragmatic approach is to make the best out of it and as fast as possible. That way the test just becomes a small notch on one’s belt and not a source of obsession.
You miss the point. My kids take the test. They do well enough to win merit scholarships based on scores and be admitted to competitive programs based on scores and be admitted to competitive schools based on their applications. At this point, it is not a big deal. We prep. They take. When it might become an issue is if the test starts to align with Springboard’s content vs. generalized skills. (I am completely baffled that there isn’t outrage by the educrats and the general public over CB producing curriculum. I seriously do NOT get it.) One I am willing to do, the other I am not.
FWIW, where our kids end up attending college has nothing to do with ability and everything to do with the fact that we can’t afford our very high EFC per child for their college education. We have a lot of kids (even by the definition of people who have a lot of kids. 
) and my husband has a great job. But our lives do not revolve around paying for college b/c we do like to live. 
Ferguson is the reason I am here. Granted, to look at my 400ish posts you might assume I am a newbie, but I have been here for 4+ years, reading (if only rarely posting) on a very regular basis, as a direct result of the reference to CC in Crazy U.
It took less than 10 minutes clicking around this site to figure out what Ferguson’s opinion was worth on college admissions and this site. “long on humor but extremely short on facts and real understanding of the college process” is an accurate and exceedingly generous characterization of Mr. F’s contribution to the topic at hand.
@JHS
You might be interested to know that Ferguson essentially mocked this site as a cesspool of moronic college gossip for students and parents with nothing productive to do with their lives (okay, that is an editorial elaboration, but it is not far off, it might even be kind).
I am still here; I shredded Ferguson’s book ages ago.
It might inform your opinion of someone who would use Ferguson and his made-up-from-whole-cloth anecdotes of 30-35k college consultant/tutors as evidence to support her tirade.
I read the entire article without noticing who wrote it until I read all of these comments. I was quite shocked, as, with the exceptions of some very good points toward the end about cosmetic diversity and elite private school grads flocking to Wall St. (my own bias that I sympathize with these points), it was quite obviously the usual par-for-the-course anti standardized testing/it’s all about income drivel (and I am strongly ANTI-over reliance on these tests in admissions, but for much different reasons).
I was particularly disappointing in this bit…
“Morse, a small man who works in an unassuming office, is described by Ferguson as…” emphasis mine.
Wait, what? did I just read that, from Lani Guinier??? Wow, just wow…
I guess when you are preaching to the choir, no shot is too cheap.
The over-generalizations in the article are somewhat appalling. Only kids of modest background are driven to do well? Only kids of modest or poor backgrounds give back to their communities? The article seems to suggest that parents should we not strive for success so our children can be disadvantaged and thus more likely to succeed. As a kid from a working poor background, good SAT scores helped me get college merit money. While we make good money with both parents working, we have no grandparent money or anticipated inheritance and so my kids, while comfortably middle class, understand they need to make their own success. So my oldest also used good SAT scores to gain merit money.
Getting rid of the SAT would not impact the percentage of 1%ers at elite colleges. The colleges certainly know that a 4.0 at an elite high school represents a kid that can handle the college coursework even though it may actually be a kid that had lots of subject area tutors. For a kid from a low performing HS, that same 4.0 may not be viewed in the same way. But if that kid also has a 2300+ SAT score, the college is pretty sure he or she is a great candidate.
The SAT or ACT is certainly not a great test. But there has to be some way to level the GPA playing field and to allow students from high schools not typically noticed to get a look. A top GPA at one school (even with lots of so-called APs) is not the same as at another. I don’t ever see those that advocate for getting rid of this test offering a solution to this issue.
The solution to better representation of poor students at elite colleges is for better schools for all students. At the very least, much more support for the best students at the worst high schools to know that something better is out there - perhaps not Harvard but some other excellent college.
Actually, once I read the author’s name – and not even the first sentence – I knew exactly what she would be saying. As would most.
JHS, for as educated (so-called) as she is, the above statement lacks critical thinking skills. And if turned into my class, I would give the point a zero for clearly confusing correlation with causation. But then Law Profs have never been known to be numbers people, and may have even skipped AP Stats.
Hint to the Radcliffe alumna: Harvard undergrad is also filled with many wealthy individuals; the vast majority of undergrads are top ~5%'ers. Perhaps it is wealth that creates the “severe…lacking in element of service.”
another misuse of critical thinking skills, but that is ok in an opinion piece (in the noted peer-reviewed journal called salon. Nothing but the best for a HLS prof, huh?)
The SAT/ACT makes no claim to be an aptitude test.
bluebayou, I am puzzled by your post. I don’t think you are disagreeing with the (mostly) factual statement that the top career choices of “many” male Harvard students are lacking in any element of service. It doesn’t take AP Stats to acknowledge the accuracy of that. (And, by the way, I don’t think AP Stats existed when Guinier was in high school.) So you must be objecting to the next sentence. I get the correlation/causation issue, but I think you are misreading a statement in which Guinier is making the same point you are.
What I take to be Guinier’s theme is that we define “merit” to correspond to the cultural ideals of the wealthiest, most powerful group, and then use standardized tests to select for those qualities. That assures that our highest-quality institutions have student bodies that consist largely of representatives of that segment of society, with “diverse” elements chosen by how closely they resemble the dominant group. So, yes, it’s ultimately wealth that is associated with the severe lack of any element of service.
I do think that Guinier is suggesting that if Harvard selected for different qualities, the range of career goals of its students would shift as well. That seems almost axiomatic. But I don’t think she is saying that the tests cause people to be selfish, or that Harvard does.
(As for law school professors, quite a few of them – and the percentage has been increasing steadily for the past generation – really are numbers people. You have perhaps heard of Richard Posner?)