When I asked the graduate school student in Urban Education whether her distaste toward standardized tests extended to those given pilots or plumbers, she immediately switched gears to talk about poverty. I did not ask her whether we should water down education standards until poverty is resolved.
Despite the publicity when well-known colleges announce with a strange tone combining pride and defiance that they have dropped SAT scores from their application requirements, the test still means something, particularly given the correlation of its results to success in year one of college.
Professional educators often regard a 1000 combined score for the Reading and Math portions (ignoring the Writing segment, a calamity of sorts, but that’s for another essay) as being indicative of college readiness. Others use 1550 for the three test components combined.
The national average for the latest round of tests was 1490, uh, not good. (My home state of New Jersey weighed in with a 1520, comprised of 500, 521, and 499 respectively). Only 42% of SAT test-takers achieved the 1550 level, with the rate for Hispanics being 23% and that of African Americans, 16%.
Culturally biased questions (perhaps partly reflecting the inadequately diverse composition of the staff at ETS, creator of the SAT), inferior urban education systems, and second language situations are typically labeled as key factors behind antagonism toward the SAT. As an offsetting factor, many entities which work with students having subpar SAT results believe that they can be successful on college campuses where the average SAT is 100 points or higher, assuming there are adequate support services available.
Without in any way denying that the SAT can be improved — which in actuality is taking place (reacting to test question complaints and a loss of market share to the competitive ACT offering, previously reluctant Eastern institutions now are accepting both SAT and ACT results), there is a fear that negativity toward the SAT becomes sloppily conflated with a similar attitude toward standardized tests in general, resulting in reduced academic, and even aspirational, expectations.
If the Complete College America data are correct—5% of two-year college students earn their degree in two years and under 20% of four-year public college students earn their degree in four years—one suspects that defects in the SAT process are not a critical education reform issue, but simply one item on the long list of factors.