by Jim Brown and Bob Ditmer
An education activist is dismissing critics who say the SAT is unfair to certain ethnic groups and favors students who have wealthier families.
Earlier this summer, the College Board voted to add a handwritten essay to the SAT and drop its analogy section. The move followed complaints from University of California President Dr. Richard Atkinson, who claims the exam fails to accurately measure what applicants actually learn in school.
David Gersten is executive director of the Center for Equal Opportunity. He says people like Dr. Atkinson have routinely attacked the Scholastic Aptitude Test, now known as the Scholastic Assessment Test.
“They've changed the name [and] tried to make it watered-down in some way,” Gersten says. “They've attempted to downgrade its utility in determining whether or not students gain admittance. The problem is that they've still never come up with a better indicator of college success.”
Atkinson, who once proposed dropping the SAT as a requirement for undergraduate admission, also has downgraded SAT scores as an important factor in admissions, arguing that the exam distorts educational priorities and is unfair to certain ethnic groups. But Gersten says such criticism is unfounded.
“The SAT score is the truest assessment of how a potential student will handle a college environment,” he says. “You just simply cannot stick a student who earns an 1100 on their SAT scores in an environment where most of the students are earning 1400 or 1500 on their SAT scores and expect them to survive.”
Gerston says downgrading the importance of the SAT creates a “sink-or-swim” situation for countless students who are admitted under lower standards.
Exit Exams
Meanwhile, the Center on Education Policy is studying if so-called “exit exams” are really a valid measure of whether a student is ready to graduate. So far, the Center say nothing indicates the exams should be abandoned.
John Schilling is with the Education Leaders Council. He says “you cannot blame the fever on the thermometer” — and believes that exit exams are “incredibly useful tools” in determining where students are academically.
Dave Schnittger of the House Education and Workforce Committee says the president's No Child Left Behind Act calls for annual testing in grades three through eight. The emphasis of that testing, he says, is on reading and math — the objective being to make sure that students have the basic skills they need to succeed.
The study will continue for three years.
This update courtesy of Agape Press.
