A recent post on the NACAC listserv was shocking in its obtuseness and demonstrates how blind many of us have become as we supposedly try to be of service to students. The request to fellow listers was as follows:
I am working on college planning with two intellectually bright high school juniors who are very unmotivated about preparing for an SAT test. They come from very high income families and their parents have hired very expensive individual SAT tutors. I personally know that their tutors relate well to high school students and have remarkable records for helping students to significantly improve their SAT scores. These two students are extremely resistant about seeing the tutors on a regular basis and doing outside practice assignments. I have reviewed the studentҀs PSAT scores with each student and their parents, and the students have ideas about colleges they would like to apply to׀and could easily be realistic--with SAT scores that are somewhat higher than their PSAT scores. Learning and emotional disabilities, and ADD have been ruled out. I see the above situation as more of a parent/discipline issue rather than a college planning issue, but at the same time would be most appreciative of any suggestions for getting these students more motivated.
To summarize: Two "intellectually bright" juniors from "high income" families are "unmotivated" about spending time prepping for the SAT with "very expensive" tutors. This resistance led initially to worries that they had "learning or emotional disabilities" or attention deficit disorder. The family is desperately seeking ways to get these non-conformists to submit to SAT prep.
Has it come to this? Are students who prefer not to waste their time on SAT prep now threatened, like refuseniks, with being branded as mentally unstable? Are they to be diagnosed by "experts" who classify them as unbalanced because of their refusal to submit to the idiocy of test prep? Has the execrable advice of writers like Judith Wissner-Gross, which basically demands that students be engineered by their parents for college (and not just any college, damn it!) from the time they can fill in a test bubble, finally taken over the college process? Will we start sending these nonconformists to testing gulags where they are re-educated to embrace the charms of the College Board?
I cheer these "intellectually bright" students and hope they get some support from the testing underground, which will provide them with safe haven and copies of "The Origin of Species," "Huckleberry Finn," Mozart's piano concertos, and "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit," to get them through this trying period in their lives. (To find out more about the testing underground, go to any public library and get lost in the stacks near the Byzantine history section. They'll find you.) If I were a college, I'd admit them right now simply for their audacity.
Contrast this insidious effort to "re-educate" these smart kids with an amazing story that appeared in today's Chicago Tribune. It is the story of two parents who sent six kids to Northern Illinois University, all of whom went on to receive Ph.D.s and all of whom are now leaders in their fields. How did this happen? What music did Mrs. Sereno (for that is her name) play to those babies in her womb? What tapes or tutors or special schools did she drive her kids to so that they would rise into the world of genius? How often did she drill them in their cribs to know their timestables and the capitals of the world? How many summer programs did she enroll them in? Did she write a book telling me how to do it all? Most important, how did she teach them to get past all the stupid kids who stood in their way to success? (One child, Paul, is a world-famous paleontologist at the University of Chicago who has contributed vast amounts of knowledge to the field; his brothers and sisters are all neurological researchers working for universities in England, Scotland, Oregon, Texas, and Kansas.)
Mrs. Sereno's diabolical plan amounts to this: "We encouraged the idea that learning was exciting...I know how butterflies have sex, because we made a mating chamber for them so the kids could see all the stages of moth and butterfly life. We had slime mold growing upstairs. We had art in the house and a kiln for firing pottery. They all played instruments, though only two of them had any talent. I wanted my kids to go out and have their own adventures, to learn to fly on their own." So, her children were what we might call "free-range" kids, with plenty of support from mom and dad. There was lots of give and take, plenty of love, and what sounds like a happy chaos encircling the family.
Paul did not do well in high school and in elementary school teachers wanted to hold him back. Perhaps he was like one of those intelligent kids who know instinctively that SAT prep, endless worksheets and things like them are gigantic wastes of time and antithetical to everything that makes education interesting. As he says in the article, "I didn't do well with the structured way things are taught in school. I liked the more free-form, hands-on way of learning, like we did at home." Imagine that! Kids trying to learn on their own! Running around as their curiosity and interest lead them!
It scares people now when kids are like that--there's no way to measure "outcomes," no number that can be used to sum up progress, no "metrics" to gauge how each step is evaluated. You sort of have to leave things to chance, inspiration, and a love of learning (which test prep decidedly is not) and that's never going to get your kids into the Ivy League! They might end up at Northern Illinois, for God's sake! And then what would happen to them!!!!!
Showing posts with label SAT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SAT. Show all posts
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Monday, January 5, 2009
Taming the Testing Dragon
The coming new year for the Chinese is the Year of the Ox, so I'm going to go with that spirit and suggest it's time to tell students applying to college that they can take the ACT or SAT once and that's it. The current discussion about "score choice" and what colleges want versus what the College Board wants them to want versus what ACT is doing and how all the test prep companies figure into all this mess cries out for a Gordian knot solution (sorry to mix cultural references). I've said many times that the admission process is far too complicated, overgrowing students' educations and becoming more important than what they're learning in high school. So, to repeat: Limit students to taking the SAT or ACT once. Period. We'll all be better off.
I know many will shriek at this limitation of students' right to flay themselves in the quest for collegiate Valhalla, but let's think about some of the issues (and for the sake of argument I'll try to limit my own abhorrence of these tests):
Argument: Students should have the right to take the test as many times as they wish and report their best scores to enhance their applications. It's a free country!
Response: Many may see a one-time testing approach as too similar to the European all or nothing tests (and many people still think of the tests as the be-all-and-end-all for college admission). But a test score in the U.S. is not determinative; it can be considered, downplayed, or lauded by any college to whom it is reported. And it doesn't limit where students can apply. Hundreds of institutions don't even use the scores or are score optional, with little effect on the quality of their student bodies. And even those who use scores often downplay them when necessary to enroll athletes, legacies, talented minority students, and so on. In other words, scores are fungible, not fixed; one set of scores or six doesn't really make that much of a difference.
Argument: Students should have the opportunity to get their best scores to indicate their true abilities.
Response: The College Board, which produces the SAT, long ago gave up the myth they themselves originated that the test can't be coached since it was an indicator of innate abilities. It even offers its own prep courses to subvert (sorry, prepare for) the test. And companies like Princeton Review and others, whatever one might think of them, have demonstrated that it is possible to raise scores not by knowing more about geometry or American history, but by knowing how the test is structured. How this adds to a student's academic qualities has yet to be determined. Ironically, students who take the test again and raise their scores significantly can be accused of cheating, and a very high test score coupled with low or mediocre grades can brand an applicant a slug in class. So it's damned if you do, damned if you don't, and whatever "true ability" is is certainly not being measured by the ACT or SAT.
Argument: Taking the test several times is just a good way to get a better score; it's not unfair or anything.
Response: Practice tests already exist for the SAT and the ACT, namely, the PSAT and the PLAN. Administered at students' schools, they come back with detailed explanations of what students got right and wrong and what concepts they need to work on for when they take the test for real. In fact, students can take the PLAN and the PSAT in their sophomore and junior years, without scores being reported anywhere, so they have plenty of time to see what they need to improve when the time comes.
Argument: If students want to take the test multiple times, what's wrong with that?
Response: Well, nothing, really, if you think that going through hours of test prep, anxiety, and craziness, not to mention hundreds if not thousands of dollars somehow are positive educational developments. Testing already crowds out actual academic subjects as early as third grade, and drilling for college entrance exams is the most tedious, boring, and retrograde activity a school can indulge in. No wonder students hate it. Students are already idiotically overtested and as to whether it's always the students' choice to take and retakes the tests, I'd look more closely at parental influence.
Argument: Test prep and multiple testing give students a taste of what's expected of them in college.
Response: I for one wouldn't attend an institution that focused on testing like that as an evaluative measure. Does it introduce concepts to think about, encourage intellectual development, accurately measure what a student knows? No. Testing is something to be gotten through, not embraced. It is intellectually deadening and as welcome as plague. Most students will find that, except for huge institutions with classes of hundreds, they will rarely see SAT-like tests.
Argument: A student can have an "off" day on the one day that the test is given, leading to a "false negative" score.
Response: A student's score is always considered in the context of high school strength and GPA; an "off" day could easily be seen as that in the admission process when so-so scores accompany an otherwise strong record. Scores (as well as every other application element) are subject to the sense and good judgment of the individuals reading applications, so there is every reason to believe that a sense of who's "off" can be developed with a one-test limit even as it is now with multi-test scores being reported.
Argument: Colleges need to be able to put the best scores of their applicants together so they can put together the best profiles possible, so allowing students to take the tests multiple times is to their advantage.
Response: This is a college issue, not a student or educational issue. In my experience we spent much more time talking about students' activities, courses, and achievements than their test scores in committee. One argument is that no college wants to have poorer scores to report than its competitors do. But if everyone has only the one score to report, a deflation will occur across the board and equilibrium should be maintained.
Argument: Multiple scores enable colleges to get the best bond ratings and rankings.
Response: Aside from the insidiousness of these methods of rating colleges, the same principle applies as in the answer above: If all institutions have the same one-test figures, it seems likely that everything will reach an equilibrium that would merely lead to a recalibration of the ratings and the rankings.
Argument: A single test date would put more pressure on students because there would be no "safety valve" if the results weren't good.
Response: Probably, but it would be up to colleges and universities to put the test in a more enlightened context by showing how they use it and where it actually stands in the admission hierarchy. In fact, adopting the one-time test might cause colleges to rethink how they use it because it would be a rawer picture of the test-taker, more "authentic," so to speak. A single date would be intense, but knowing it would all be over afterwards might be liberating. If the date were at the end of junior year, results received in the summer might provide motivation for doing better in courses senior year to make up for a poor score.
There are many reasons to support a one-time only test:
1. The hours and dollars spent on test prep seriously distract from more useful activities like homework and true academic development, whether they're sponsored through schools as classtime sessions or after school. Especially in areas with a high percent of first-generation or poor students, it is critical that time and dollars not be sacrificed for something as ephemeral and uncertain as test prep. I know of one school that has spent nearly $60,000.00 on test prep for students who could have better been served by spending that money on academic enhancement, tutoring, equipment, and so on. A recent article in Harper's magazine (September 2008) documenting a year of test prep in a New York City school is illuminating. Click on this entry's title to go to the article.
2. Test prep as a part of schooling is a kind of regression to the days of rote learning, which has long since been abandoned in this country. It kills motivation, deadens intellectual curiosity, and makes education look like a hoop to jump through rather that an ongoing source of personal development. It makes students and teachers cynical; no good teacher I know will sacrifice a classroom discussion about "Death of a Salesman" for an SAT vocabulary drill. And no student would willingly attend. He may not care for Arthur Miller, either, but at least there's the possibility that something interesting might come up. (Furthermore, it most disadvantages those who can least afford it: First-generation and other underserved students who most need to learn the basics of English, math, and so on to do well in college.)
3. Multiple testing opportunities favor those already privileged; a one-time test date can even the playing field to a certain extent. While privileged students can still afford the books and testing that non-privileged students can't, the one-time test means that what you see is what you get on the other end. Will non-privileged students suffer because they can't afford test prep or the ability to try again? Those students already have extra consideration for their backgrounds and lack of educational support, so test scores will continue to be seen that way. (Remember, test scores have been shown definitiely to have cultural biases.) It will affect privileged students more, because they'll have to live with their scores without being able to tinker with them over and over. (Idea: After adopting the one-test only policy, schools can ask "Estimate how much preparation you received or paid for before the test." The more that's reported, the less credible the test. Fantasy I know, but still...)
4. Multiple testing is a financial bonanza that offers little real improvement in educational environment, siphoning off money from individuals and school systems that could be put to better use. While test prep companies and the College Board get rich coming and going, that money doesn't go to enhancing educational opportunity (although the companies do provide their services pro bono in many circumstances). And schools that can't really afford it are led to chase the ephemara of scores as a way to getting their students into college rather than focusing on building their academic programs.
5. The ability to take the test multiple times fosters the idea that testing is more crucial than it really is. Like Sysiphus, rolling the stone up the hill only to have it roll down again so he has to start all over again, multiple testing really accomplishes very little while creating great strain and anxiety. Nothing gets learned, nothing is accomplished, other more fruitful opportunities are passed up, and in the end, an admission decision can be made in spite of scores as much as because of them. Consistently, according to NACAC, a student's GPA and course strength are the most compelling parts of the application; the scores are really more window dressing. They're easy to look at and mess with; they have acquired a magical quality; and they play into our love of lists and bests/worsts. So while admission officers tend to drool over big scores, they also can see the proverbial "diamonds in the rough" that shine in class without the burnishing of high test scores.
Adopting a one-time only testing policy may be seen as radical, but it would help to simplify and equalize the whole testing universe. Colleges and universities should consider cutting back the testing underbrush while at the same time promoting the importance of academic achievement more forcefully.
I know many will shriek at this limitation of students' right to flay themselves in the quest for collegiate Valhalla, but let's think about some of the issues (and for the sake of argument I'll try to limit my own abhorrence of these tests):
Argument: Students should have the right to take the test as many times as they wish and report their best scores to enhance their applications. It's a free country!
Response: Many may see a one-time testing approach as too similar to the European all or nothing tests (and many people still think of the tests as the be-all-and-end-all for college admission). But a test score in the U.S. is not determinative; it can be considered, downplayed, or lauded by any college to whom it is reported. And it doesn't limit where students can apply. Hundreds of institutions don't even use the scores or are score optional, with little effect on the quality of their student bodies. And even those who use scores often downplay them when necessary to enroll athletes, legacies, talented minority students, and so on. In other words, scores are fungible, not fixed; one set of scores or six doesn't really make that much of a difference.
Argument: Students should have the opportunity to get their best scores to indicate their true abilities.
Response: The College Board, which produces the SAT, long ago gave up the myth they themselves originated that the test can't be coached since it was an indicator of innate abilities. It even offers its own prep courses to subvert (sorry, prepare for) the test. And companies like Princeton Review and others, whatever one might think of them, have demonstrated that it is possible to raise scores not by knowing more about geometry or American history, but by knowing how the test is structured. How this adds to a student's academic qualities has yet to be determined. Ironically, students who take the test again and raise their scores significantly can be accused of cheating, and a very high test score coupled with low or mediocre grades can brand an applicant a slug in class. So it's damned if you do, damned if you don't, and whatever "true ability" is is certainly not being measured by the ACT or SAT.
Argument: Taking the test several times is just a good way to get a better score; it's not unfair or anything.
Response: Practice tests already exist for the SAT and the ACT, namely, the PSAT and the PLAN. Administered at students' schools, they come back with detailed explanations of what students got right and wrong and what concepts they need to work on for when they take the test for real. In fact, students can take the PLAN and the PSAT in their sophomore and junior years, without scores being reported anywhere, so they have plenty of time to see what they need to improve when the time comes.
Argument: If students want to take the test multiple times, what's wrong with that?
Response: Well, nothing, really, if you think that going through hours of test prep, anxiety, and craziness, not to mention hundreds if not thousands of dollars somehow are positive educational developments. Testing already crowds out actual academic subjects as early as third grade, and drilling for college entrance exams is the most tedious, boring, and retrograde activity a school can indulge in. No wonder students hate it. Students are already idiotically overtested and as to whether it's always the students' choice to take and retakes the tests, I'd look more closely at parental influence.
Argument: Test prep and multiple testing give students a taste of what's expected of them in college.
Response: I for one wouldn't attend an institution that focused on testing like that as an evaluative measure. Does it introduce concepts to think about, encourage intellectual development, accurately measure what a student knows? No. Testing is something to be gotten through, not embraced. It is intellectually deadening and as welcome as plague. Most students will find that, except for huge institutions with classes of hundreds, they will rarely see SAT-like tests.
Argument: A student can have an "off" day on the one day that the test is given, leading to a "false negative" score.
Response: A student's score is always considered in the context of high school strength and GPA; an "off" day could easily be seen as that in the admission process when so-so scores accompany an otherwise strong record. Scores (as well as every other application element) are subject to the sense and good judgment of the individuals reading applications, so there is every reason to believe that a sense of who's "off" can be developed with a one-test limit even as it is now with multi-test scores being reported.
Argument: Colleges need to be able to put the best scores of their applicants together so they can put together the best profiles possible, so allowing students to take the tests multiple times is to their advantage.
Response: This is a college issue, not a student or educational issue. In my experience we spent much more time talking about students' activities, courses, and achievements than their test scores in committee. One argument is that no college wants to have poorer scores to report than its competitors do. But if everyone has only the one score to report, a deflation will occur across the board and equilibrium should be maintained.
Argument: Multiple scores enable colleges to get the best bond ratings and rankings.
Response: Aside from the insidiousness of these methods of rating colleges, the same principle applies as in the answer above: If all institutions have the same one-test figures, it seems likely that everything will reach an equilibrium that would merely lead to a recalibration of the ratings and the rankings.
Argument: A single test date would put more pressure on students because there would be no "safety valve" if the results weren't good.
Response: Probably, but it would be up to colleges and universities to put the test in a more enlightened context by showing how they use it and where it actually stands in the admission hierarchy. In fact, adopting the one-time test might cause colleges to rethink how they use it because it would be a rawer picture of the test-taker, more "authentic," so to speak. A single date would be intense, but knowing it would all be over afterwards might be liberating. If the date were at the end of junior year, results received in the summer might provide motivation for doing better in courses senior year to make up for a poor score.
There are many reasons to support a one-time only test:
1. The hours and dollars spent on test prep seriously distract from more useful activities like homework and true academic development, whether they're sponsored through schools as classtime sessions or after school. Especially in areas with a high percent of first-generation or poor students, it is critical that time and dollars not be sacrificed for something as ephemeral and uncertain as test prep. I know of one school that has spent nearly $60,000.00 on test prep for students who could have better been served by spending that money on academic enhancement, tutoring, equipment, and so on. A recent article in Harper's magazine (September 2008) documenting a year of test prep in a New York City school is illuminating. Click on this entry's title to go to the article.
2. Test prep as a part of schooling is a kind of regression to the days of rote learning, which has long since been abandoned in this country. It kills motivation, deadens intellectual curiosity, and makes education look like a hoop to jump through rather that an ongoing source of personal development. It makes students and teachers cynical; no good teacher I know will sacrifice a classroom discussion about "Death of a Salesman" for an SAT vocabulary drill. And no student would willingly attend. He may not care for Arthur Miller, either, but at least there's the possibility that something interesting might come up. (Furthermore, it most disadvantages those who can least afford it: First-generation and other underserved students who most need to learn the basics of English, math, and so on to do well in college.)
3. Multiple testing opportunities favor those already privileged; a one-time test date can even the playing field to a certain extent. While privileged students can still afford the books and testing that non-privileged students can't, the one-time test means that what you see is what you get on the other end. Will non-privileged students suffer because they can't afford test prep or the ability to try again? Those students already have extra consideration for their backgrounds and lack of educational support, so test scores will continue to be seen that way. (Remember, test scores have been shown definitiely to have cultural biases.) It will affect privileged students more, because they'll have to live with their scores without being able to tinker with them over and over. (Idea: After adopting the one-test only policy, schools can ask "Estimate how much preparation you received or paid for before the test." The more that's reported, the less credible the test. Fantasy I know, but still...)
4. Multiple testing is a financial bonanza that offers little real improvement in educational environment, siphoning off money from individuals and school systems that could be put to better use. While test prep companies and the College Board get rich coming and going, that money doesn't go to enhancing educational opportunity (although the companies do provide their services pro bono in many circumstances). And schools that can't really afford it are led to chase the ephemara of scores as a way to getting their students into college rather than focusing on building their academic programs.
5. The ability to take the test multiple times fosters the idea that testing is more crucial than it really is. Like Sysiphus, rolling the stone up the hill only to have it roll down again so he has to start all over again, multiple testing really accomplishes very little while creating great strain and anxiety. Nothing gets learned, nothing is accomplished, other more fruitful opportunities are passed up, and in the end, an admission decision can be made in spite of scores as much as because of them. Consistently, according to NACAC, a student's GPA and course strength are the most compelling parts of the application; the scores are really more window dressing. They're easy to look at and mess with; they have acquired a magical quality; and they play into our love of lists and bests/worsts. So while admission officers tend to drool over big scores, they also can see the proverbial "diamonds in the rough" that shine in class without the burnishing of high test scores.
Adopting a one-time only testing policy may be seen as radical, but it would help to simplify and equalize the whole testing universe. Colleges and universities should consider cutting back the testing underbrush while at the same time promoting the importance of academic achievement more forcefully.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Harvard's SAT Exceptionalism
We all know that Harvard can do whatever it wants and usually does. And what it does usually sets the course for the rest of the country's colleges and universities (at least in the sense of giving them something to think about...) But this recent comment in the Boston Globe really has me steaming:
Harvard's dean of admissions, Bill Fitzsimmons, said standardized tests that are based on high school course work have proven superior to the SAT at determining college readiness and said he hoped such tests will begin to play a larger role in admissions decisions.
"Wouldn't it be better for students to study chemistry and math and language, than trying to game a somewhat esoteric set of test-taking skills?" he asked.
Yet Harvard "could never be SAT-optional," he said, because of the need for a national measure to identify top students, including those from urban or rural high schools that don't send many students to elite colleges.
Mr. Fitzsimmons recently chaired a committee that explored the use of standardized testing in college admission. It recommended that the SAT be de-emphasized in admission decisions for all the reasons that many of us have been giving for many years. Clearly, however, this recommendation is meant to apply only to lesser institutions, and not Harvard itself. Harvard couldn't possibly do what the plebes do because it needs to have a "national measure" to identify top students, unlike everyone else, who presumably only need, what, "local" measures? Or other more scurrilous ways of evaluating applications?
This smug exceptionalism not only throws the committee's study and recommendations into doubt (were you just wasting everyone's time?) it also reeks of a "Let them eat cake" mentality that makes us common folk want to grab our pitchforks and settle someone's hash. Why can de-emphasizing the SAT work for everyone else but not possibly for Harvard? Surely with its 372 years of experience it knows how to identify a talented student by now without a test that has only been in existence for 80 years or so. And surely, if it's good enough for Harvard, why should anyone else give it up, despite the fact that many colleges and universities have, without any diminution in their ability to attract and identify able applicants.
Fitzsimmons connects using the SAT with the necessity of finding "urban or rural" students who might otherwise, presumably, be overlooked without it. But this is just protective coloring, meant to reassure us that Harvard needs the scores to find talented first generation and minority students it would otherwise miss. But most of those students won't do well on the SAT, so Harvard would either have to reject them or ignore the scores. And Harvard has the resources to find anyone it wants, so why rely on the scores when it's just finished downplaying them?
So the message and value of the study become muddied and pointless. Whatever we may think about America's top university "brand," we must acknowledge that Harvard's imprimatur on anything carries great weight. Without Harvard's taking the lead by adopting a more enlightened view of admission testing (even if it stops short of de-emphasizing it), what was the point of doing the study in the first place? Of course, it's not bound to follow through on any conclusions, but wouldn't its participation suggest it was willing to lead where those conclusions might point? To say categorically that it couldn't possibly risk its reputation by de-emphasizing scores, even though that was the conclusion of the study seems arrogant at best, cynical and unilateral at worst.
If Harvard wants to avoid being the Marie Antoinette of colleges and universities, perhaps it should get out with the people a little instead of simply visiting its faux village to commune with the peasants. It might experiment with how it uses the SAT by making decisions on a sampling of students without using scores and following them through over the years. With the immense resources at its disposal, Harvard could actually perform a service rather than retreat into its opulence. Leadership on this issue would be to take the study's conclusions seriously, as if they applied to ALL institutions and not just everyone else.
One interesting irony of this situation is that the SAT was once touted specifically as a way to find otherwise hidden talents throughout the country when many colleges had narrowly specific entrance exams of their own. It was conceived of as a great leveller. But with the increasing connection of test performance with income, this seems no longer defensible; now it's as much a barrier to admission as a way into college. The idea of the SAT's being a "national standard" that is somehow equal across the country has been definitvely refuted over and over again. And being able to find talented students in out of the way places has never been easier. So what's Harvard's excuse? Apres moi, le deluge...
Harvard's dean of admissions, Bill Fitzsimmons, said standardized tests that are based on high school course work have proven superior to the SAT at determining college readiness and said he hoped such tests will begin to play a larger role in admissions decisions.
"Wouldn't it be better for students to study chemistry and math and language, than trying to game a somewhat esoteric set of test-taking skills?" he asked.
Yet Harvard "could never be SAT-optional," he said, because of the need for a national measure to identify top students, including those from urban or rural high schools that don't send many students to elite colleges.
Mr. Fitzsimmons recently chaired a committee that explored the use of standardized testing in college admission. It recommended that the SAT be de-emphasized in admission decisions for all the reasons that many of us have been giving for many years. Clearly, however, this recommendation is meant to apply only to lesser institutions, and not Harvard itself. Harvard couldn't possibly do what the plebes do because it needs to have a "national measure" to identify top students, unlike everyone else, who presumably only need, what, "local" measures? Or other more scurrilous ways of evaluating applications?
This smug exceptionalism not only throws the committee's study and recommendations into doubt (were you just wasting everyone's time?) it also reeks of a "Let them eat cake" mentality that makes us common folk want to grab our pitchforks and settle someone's hash. Why can de-emphasizing the SAT work for everyone else but not possibly for Harvard? Surely with its 372 years of experience it knows how to identify a talented student by now without a test that has only been in existence for 80 years or so. And surely, if it's good enough for Harvard, why should anyone else give it up, despite the fact that many colleges and universities have, without any diminution in their ability to attract and identify able applicants.
Fitzsimmons connects using the SAT with the necessity of finding "urban or rural" students who might otherwise, presumably, be overlooked without it. But this is just protective coloring, meant to reassure us that Harvard needs the scores to find talented first generation and minority students it would otherwise miss. But most of those students won't do well on the SAT, so Harvard would either have to reject them or ignore the scores. And Harvard has the resources to find anyone it wants, so why rely on the scores when it's just finished downplaying them?
So the message and value of the study become muddied and pointless. Whatever we may think about America's top university "brand," we must acknowledge that Harvard's imprimatur on anything carries great weight. Without Harvard's taking the lead by adopting a more enlightened view of admission testing (even if it stops short of de-emphasizing it), what was the point of doing the study in the first place? Of course, it's not bound to follow through on any conclusions, but wouldn't its participation suggest it was willing to lead where those conclusions might point? To say categorically that it couldn't possibly risk its reputation by de-emphasizing scores, even though that was the conclusion of the study seems arrogant at best, cynical and unilateral at worst.
If Harvard wants to avoid being the Marie Antoinette of colleges and universities, perhaps it should get out with the people a little instead of simply visiting its faux village to commune with the peasants. It might experiment with how it uses the SAT by making decisions on a sampling of students without using scores and following them through over the years. With the immense resources at its disposal, Harvard could actually perform a service rather than retreat into its opulence. Leadership on this issue would be to take the study's conclusions seriously, as if they applied to ALL institutions and not just everyone else.
One interesting irony of this situation is that the SAT was once touted specifically as a way to find otherwise hidden talents throughout the country when many colleges had narrowly specific entrance exams of their own. It was conceived of as a great leveller. But with the increasing connection of test performance with income, this seems no longer defensible; now it's as much a barrier to admission as a way into college. The idea of the SAT's being a "national standard" that is somehow equal across the country has been definitvely refuted over and over again. And being able to find talented students in out of the way places has never been easier. So what's Harvard's excuse? Apres moi, le deluge...
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