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I heard about this on NPR the other day, and, I must say, I giggled.

What’s next? NCLB isn’t effective?

The SAT is certainly not perfect. And, although ETS, is (legally) a nonprofit, it does not behave like one.

Furthermore, if you look up “arrogance” in the dictionary, you are likely to find several ETS/SAT executives there. The writing test they hyped whenever anyone was willing (or forced) to listen, has served only to generate additional income for them and made the SAT an endurance test. But, saying that the SAT “sucks” is oversimplification because while there is a lot wrong with the test, it has always been, despite its flaws, a pretty good predictor of success in college.

@ Erik–I know, I was shaking my head in disbelief at the blatant obviousness of it all, and then would alternate my that reaction with laughing at the blatant stupidity of the people in charge.

@OCE–Yes, arrogance is a good word for the folks in charge. And as far as the SAT being a pretty good predictor of success in college, I agree that it is for the kids it’s currently designed for, which, unfortunately, are usually the kids who would have been able to go to college regardless of their scores on a standardized test.

I dislike the SAT (and all standardized tests) because they tend to work for a particular portion of the population and not for everyone else. I explained my personal experience with the SAT and the ACT in a previous post which I’ll re-post today.

The SAT was originally developed as a way for the kids with fewer means and no family history of higher education to be able to ‘prove’ themselves to college admissions offices. The SAT was supposed to be this great equalizer, so the proverbial farm boy with uneducated parents and no college fund could show that his brain was worthy of higher education. The SAT also works well as an easy way for colleges to choose prospective students from the applicant pool–interviewing every applicant would be involve huge amounts of time, money and manpower.

So I understand why the SAT was created, and why it’s still around. And while I agree that it’s a predictor of success for a certain segment of the population, I’m standing by my oversimplified descriptive term: the SAT sucks on most of its levels and, unfortunately for everyone involved, it’s nowhere near the magic bullet it was originally designed to be.

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