The SAT matters

[Loren Pechtel]

There has been a movement to get away from it as supposedly discriminatory.

Oops--if you want to be at all fair it turns out the proposed alternatives are worse.

The SAT Isn’t What’s Unfair

MIT brings back a test that, despite its reputation, helps low-income students in an inequitable society.

www.theatlantic.com

Playing shoot-the-messenger doesn't work very well.

 

[Politesse]

No one ever said otherwise, it's well known that racial discrimination and social inequality are the reason for differential standardized test scores.

I'm surprised to see you advocating for such overtly progressive policies though. Do you genuinely feel that the US should bankroll the free, accessible, universal testing (and access to test prep) recommended by the article? If so, I most certainly agree.

 

[Trausti]

Standard tests are the great equalizer; no matter your sex, your race, your religion, or social class. Thankfully, it looks like we’re returning to that understanding.

 

[Politesse]

Standard tests are the great equalizer; no matter your sex, your race, your religion, or social class. Thankfully, it looks like we’re returning to that understanding.

That statement is flatly contradicted by the linked article.

 

[scombrid]

You think any of them are going to read an entire article in The Atlantic much less present its conclusions accurately if they do read it? No, just like all the commenters on the NPR Facebook page it is a game of read the attention grabbing headline and form a conclusion and argue on that conclusion irrespective of the actual content of the article.

 

[Bronzeage]

Standard tests are the great equalizer; no matter your sex, your race, your religion, or social class. Thankfully, it looks like we’re returning to that understanding.

Standard tests are like crossword puzzles. If you work enough puzzles created by the same editor, it gets easier and easier. Nobody gets anymore intelligent or knowledgeable by doing crossword puzzles. People tend to get better with practice. It's no different with standard tests. When a person sits down with a test and the structure of the questions is familiar, less time is needed on each question. When the score is part of a competition, those who have access to coaching and practice tests will do better than someone who is seeing it for the first time and have an advantage. it's not a level playing field.

 

[Politesse]

Nobody gets anymore intelligent or knowledgeable by doing crossword puzzles.

But, like crossword puzzles, those who do become expert at them don't always realize this fact.

 

[Elixir]

Standard tests are like crossword puzzles. If you work enough puzzles created by the same editor, it gets easier and easier. Nobody gets anymore intelligent or knowledgeable by doing crossword puzzles. People tend to get better with practice. It's no different with standard tests.

Very true!
I was deemed an underachiever in early grade school. It became a self fulfilling diagnosis as they kept feeding me more aptitude, IQ, spatial relationship etc tests, until I became much better at them than at schoolwork, which only reinforced the opinion that I should have been doing better academically.

 

[Trausti]

Standard tests are the great equalizer; no matter your sex, your race, your religion, or social class. Thankfully, it looks like we’re returning to that understanding.

That statement is flatly contradicted by the linked article.

Why did you think the Full House lady tried to cheat her kids into college? Shouldn’t her daughters have aced the SAT having grown up rich and privileged? And why do the children of poor [Asian] immigrants do so well?

 

[Derec]

SAT, while imperfect, is an objective measure of Math and English skills. It is also, unlike high school GPA, not subject to large differences in grading between different schools.

Those who believe in "equity über alles" dislike objective measures. They much prefer subjective measures like essays and "personality scores" that allows them to discriminate based on race to get the class profile they believe is more "equitable" (unless it is a so-called HBCU - then all of a sudden things like "equity" or a diverse student body no longer matter).

That's why the powers that be at the University System of California scrapped the standardized tests for good. They are not allowed to overtly discriminate by race any more, and since the referendum to allow them to do so again epically failed in 2020, they are looking for more covert ways to get what they want. Getting rid of an objective measure is essential for that goal.

That is also the reason FSMB/NBME decreed that USMLE Step 1 is to be pass/fail.

What all this (plus the woke nonsense such as "math is racist") ends up doing is continuing dumbing down of the US education system.

 

[Derec]

Why did you think the Full House lady tried to cheat her kids into college?

The kid did not have the privileged skin color and/or ethnolinguistic background. Duh!

 

[Trausti]

Standard tests are the great equalizer; no matter your sex, your race, your religion, or social class. Thankfully, it looks like we’re returning to that understanding.

Standard tests are like crossword puzzles. If you work enough puzzles created by the same editor, it gets easier and easier. Nobody gets anymore intelligent or knowledgeable by doing crossword puzzles. People tend to get better with practice. It's no different with standard tests. When a person sits down with a test and the structure of the questions is familiar, less time is needed on each question. When the score is part of a competition, those who have access to coaching and practice tests will do better than someone who is seeing it for the first time and have an advantage. it's not a level playing field.

Even the article in the OP references that test prep gives little benefit. It’s a nice thought, but wrong.

 

[Derec]

I was deemed an underachiever in early grade school. It became a self fulfilling diagnosis as they kept feeding me more aptitude, IQ, spatial relationship etc tests, until I became much better at them than at schoolwork, which only reinforced the opinion that I should have been doing better academically.

When did you go to grade school? And can you imagine that testing can become better over the decades and be less like taking cross-word puzzles from a single editor and more a fair test of aptitude that lets admissions folks compare applicants from various schools, school systems, states and even countries (as US colleges take in many international students)?

Even today SAT/ACT testing is hardly perfect. But they are the best objective, global measure of aptitude we have. We should not scrap them, but seek to improve them further.

It is ridiculous to me that people think SAT/ACT are illegitimate for college admissions but that race is not.

 

[Trausti]

Why did you think the Full House lady tried to cheat her kids into college?

The kid did not have the privileged skin color and/or ethnolinguistic background. Duh!

Well, maybe. But that episode is a prime example on why standardized tests are great equalizers. Without them, the rich and influential can always game the system while the poor genius is denied opportunity.

 

[Derec]

Well, maybe. But that episode is a prime example on why standardized tests are great equalizers. Without them, the rich and influential can always game the system while the poor genius is denied opportunity.

That's one of the points in the article. While SAT/ACT performance is mildly correlated with family status, it is less so than other measures of student preparedness. And the correlation that exists is not due to the test being unfair (as critics claim) but that kids from more well-off households, and/or whose parents are more educated, tend to be genuinely better prepared for college than others.

I also think that we need to start sooner than college to equalize opportunity (which is very different than equalizing outcomes). The article mentions that only about half the schools in the US offer Calculus. Other AP classes are probably not much different. A student showing academic promise should be able to enroll to a better school in their system to be able to take advantage of those classes. Special high schools like those in New York (that Bill DeBlowjob tried to kill for racial reasons) are also a good idea, as long as kids get to get in based on individual merit and not based on membership in an immutable group.

 

[Derec]

That statement is flatly contradicted by the linked article.

It actually is not. Or can you quote the passage you believe "flatly contradicts" what Trausti wrote?

 

[Elixir]

I was deemed an underachiever in early grade school. It became a self fulfilling diagnosis as they kept feeding me more aptitude, IQ, spatial relationship etc tests, until I became much better at them than at schoolwork, which only reinforced the opinion that I should have been doing better academically.

When did you go to grade school?

In the 1950s.

And can you imagine that testing can become better over the decades and be less like taking cross-word puzzles from a single editor and more a fair test of aptitude that lets admissions folks compare applicants from various schools, school systems, states and even countries (as US colleges take in many international students)?

No.
But I can easily imagine - in fact, unfortunately, don’t have to imagine - people who want to think that has happened.
I was subjected to so many so-called “objective” tests that their presentation elicited responses that became rote.
Want me to repeat a ten-fifteen digit number backwards? Tell you what the next number is in a random looking sequence? Tell you what a thing would look like from the other side? Pick the correct grammatical form?
Great. Just don’t ask me who conquered what, or why, or solve for x, or conjugate this Latin verb, or tell you what comes after calcium in the periodic table.

I’ve seen some more recent scholastic aptitude tests, and mostly only syntax has changed.

It is ridiculous to me that people think SAT/ACT are illegitimate for college admissions but that race is not.

It is ridiculous that you imagine a lot of people thinking that.

Your hyperbole aside, I recommend challenging yourself to come up with a few sample questions/problems that are neither formulaic (can’t be “taught to”) nor prone to cultural skew. Might not be as easy as you imagine.

Personally I like open ended questions that reveal creativity, and don’t have right/wrong “answers”. But those can’t be easily scored by either machines or humans.

ETA: “Aptitude” needs better definition.
Teaching to the test is hard to avoid, or so teachers tell me.

 

[Rhea]

Why did you think the Full House lady tried to cheat her kids into college? Shouldn’t her daughters have aced the SAT having grown up rich and privileged? And why do the children of poor [Asian] immigrants do so well?

For those who might need this information for their next SAT, this is an example of the fallacy of “False Generalization,” sometimes called the fallacy of ‘Hasty Generalization.”

Committing this fallacy happens when you use one example as an argument to claim a whole case is not true. To wit, . “If a logician considers only exceptional or dramatic cases and generalizes a rule that fits these alone, the author commits the fallacy of hasty generalization.“

Where, by “Logical Fallacy,” we mean, “has no relevant point.”

 

[Hermit]

Standard tests are the great equalizer; no matter your sex, your race, your religion, or social class. Thankfully, it looks like we’re returning to that understanding.

That statement is flatly contradicted by the linked article.

It actually is not. Or can you quote the passage you believe "flatly contradicts" what Trausti wrote?

A bit of both.

First, the article points out that better socioeconomic conditions lead to better SAT results.

Despite the marketing claims of test-prep companies, gains from test prep are modest at best. Instead, richer students’ higher scores reflect a problem that is much more durable and pervasive: These students are the beneficiaries of lifelong inequalities in opportunities to learn. As developmental scientists have long documented, poverty and racism can harm children’s learning in countless ways, even to the point of affecting their brain development. In the Developmental Behavior Genetics Lab at the University of Texas, my colleagues and I have found that children as young as 2 years old from low-income families differ from their better-off counterparts in their performance on standardized tests.

No one should be surprised that, at age 18, students who have enjoyed a lifetime of material, social, and cultural advantages perform better on tests of academic skills that those advantages facilitate.

Then it explains how MIT arrived at the apparently counterintuitive conclusion that using alternative methods disadvantages applicants from lower socioeconomic levels even more.

Dropping any admissions requirement is necessarily a decision to weigh other factors more heavily. If other student characteristics, such as essays, recommendations, and coursework, are more strongly correlated with family income than test scores are, then dropping test scores actually tilts the playing field even more in favor of richer students. This was the situation that MIT found itself in after it suspended its SAT requirement in 2020. And other schools that dropped standardized tests during the pandemic will soon find themselves in the same straits.

 

[Trausti]

Why did you think the Full House lady tried to cheat her kids into college? Shouldn’t her daughters have aced the SAT having grown up rich and privileged? And why do the children of poor [Asian] immigrants do so well?

For those who might need this information for their next SAT, this is an example of the fallacy of “False Generalization,” sometimes called the fallacy of ‘Hasty Generalization.”

Committing this fallacy happens when you use one example as an argument to claim a whole case is not true. To wit, . “If a logician considers only exceptional or dramatic cases and generalizes a rule that fits these alone, the author commits the fallacy of hasty generalization.“

Where, by “Logical Fallacy,” we mean, “has no relevant point.”

It’s called an example. Examples are often used in arguments to illustrate points. But the opinion article in the OP covers this, too. When the standardized tests are required, they reveal the smarts of low income students. Without standardized tests, these students would have little to no opportunity. As well, if tests scores were due to growing up rich and privileged, why the existence of legacy admissions?