Do you remember New Coke? According to Time magazine, a similar experiment is underway today, but this time in the highly controversial and lucrative world of standardized testing.
The College Board, keeper of the proverbial keys for millions of potential college-bound Americans, is scrapping the SATs. As of 2005, in a bold attempt to reform the curriculums of high schools across the nation, the SATs are being put out to pasture in favor of the New SATs: a test designed more for the purposes of assessing achievement than ability.
Gone will be those vexing analogies that gave so many of us ulcers years ago. Now there will be a new writing section, as well as a stronger emphasis on higher math, progressing beyond simple algebra. Educational Testing Service, the Princeton, N.J., company entrusted with formulating questions for the SAT, is being asked to develop reading comprehension questions based upon passages from Faulkner and Joyce rather than the anonymous works now included.
In short, the Standardized Aptitude Test is being kicked to the curb in favor of the New SAT, a marketing term whose acronym means nothing.
The implications of these changes are, in a word, disastrous. The primary function of the SAT as a standard in college admissions is that of any standardized test: to provide a uniform measure of comparison for competing students of incredibly diverse educational backgrounds. It is not an easy test, but then again, it is also not incredibly difficult.
It does not require an abundance of specialized knowledge, relying rather on a student's ability to reason, to work rationally on a series of problems with varying degrees of difficulty. It utilizes mathematical percepts and English vocabulary that should (for the most part) be essential to any high school education. Certainly, there will be terms that seem to not fit into this particular rubric (diaphanous, anyone?), but this is also where, in conjunction with academic performance, and SAT II scores (actual achievement tests), more qualified students are separated from those less able.
The reformulation of the SATs along lines designed to test achievement over aptitude is dangerous because it only magnifies the problems that plague the current test. There are those out there who believe that the SAT is prejudiced along racial and socioeconomic lines: a re-engineering of the test to emphasize achievement will only widen the already significant gap between have and have-nots; those who read Joyce and Faulkner in high school and those who don't.
Conversely, using the SATs as a method of forcing significant adjustments in high school curriculums could prove detrimental. Aside from the concerns of allowing a private group like the College Board to hold such enormous sway over the educations of millions of young Americans, there is the more pressing concern that high school educations will only become more further geared towards doing well on one three-hour test. We already see the hysteria that envelops high school juniors and seniors when it comes to SAT prep; further emphasis on the test could turn high schools into massive, publicly funded Kaplan centers.
The solution is simple: the SAT as it stands must be preserved, but additionally, colleges must place less emphasis on the test. As a predictor of college performance, it is relatively poor. Only in concert with academic performance in high school, and SAT IIs, does the SAT become a piece of a much larger and more efficacious picture.
In and of itself, the SAT proves one thing: while more capable students can do poorly on the test, less capable ones cannot do extremely well. A high score on the SAT merely affirms that a candidate has the tools necessary to do well in college; a midrange score, though, does not reveal much about the applicant that cannot be extrapolated from his high school grades.
Colleges need to employ the SAT as a comparative measure, a standard against which all applicants can reasonably be judged. However, the fact that what ought to serve as only one facet for consideration of a student's record has attained an almost mythic importance is the biggest problem with the test. To de-emphasize the weight of an SAT score would prove felicitous in maintaining the test's integrity as a sensible measure of intellectual ability.
Michael Biondi is a senior Diplomatic History major from Union, N.J.
