Three-Point Conversions

FOR YEARS, the makers of the SAT have been accusing their attackers of killing the bearer of bad news. When consumer advocates marshalled statistics to show that SAT scores are closely linked with family income, the testers came right back with evidence that family income corresponds just as closely to a host of other academic indicators. In an imperfect society, they argued and argue, the poor simply are unlikely to receive as good an education as the rich. The SAT only illustrates that fact.

And when infuriated secondary-school educators blamed the SAT stranglehold on admissions for hindering their students from going on to college, test-makers pointed out that it wasn't their fault but the schools' that students were graduating illiterate and scoring so embarrassingly low. The SAT only highlighted the problem.

If test-makers and takers have agreed on one thing in all this, it's that the SAT is a limited instrument. To critics, scores measure superficial skills and draw arbitrary distinctions; to advocates, scores remain a symptom, not a cause, of education and society's ills. The more serious question has always been who should take the responsibility for trying to improve the sorry state of educational affairs symbolized by the national medians that dropped and dropped.

But last week, a strange thing happened. The nation's median scores rose.

After 20 years of slipping, they rose three points overall on the 1600-pont scale, from 424 to 426 on the verbal portion and from 466 to 467 on the math.

The day the three-point hike became news, the New York Times's front-page article described the figures in passing as a significant "indicator of the quality of public education." In so doing, they surpassed any previous claims the test's proponents have made. If the College Board has insisted on one qualification when publicizing the test that pays its rent, it is the warning not to evaluate schools or school systems on how well its students score.

Such protestations, of course, have been historically useless where the general public is concerned. High school teachers drill their students on SAT-type questions for personal glory, and every few seasons a politician campaigns on the promise to raise scores. But at least such misguided faith in scores has not taken in most educators and administrators who have the ultimate responsibility for trying to salvage something from the public education system. Faced with the task of resurrecting collapsed schools and motivating uneducated teachers to function again, educators for the most part have had the sense to grit their teeth and ignore the SAT scores, trusting that if the wheels start turning again more visible achievements will follow.

Meanwhile, the trend toward less selectivity across-the-board in college admissions has cut down on the phobia that low scores present an insurmountable barrier to getting into college. The latest stats show that almost three-fourths of all applications to American four-year colleges are now accepted. In other words, educators' attention to substance over scores has started to chip away at the tendency to take the numbers too seriously.

The frightening thing about the past week, then, is the way otherwise cautious educators have rushed to reaffirm their faith in the scores now that they're showing what everyone wants to see. The Times's unqualified validation of SAT scores as an educational indictor seems particularly ominous, since the press has no reputation at stake on the scores--unlike the College Board, which understandably called a press conference.

It's perfectly reasonable that the many prominent educators involved in the fight to improve schooling--including Harvard admissions officers Dean K. Whitla and William R. Fitzsimmons '67, as well as assorted experts on education--should now be hoping against hope that their efforts might, just might have already made a difference. But their delight should not prematurely convince them that all will be well, any more than years of experience have taught them to implicitly trust the SAT. Nor should it inflame to make more extravagant claims. A good statistic is a lot more pleasant to believe in than a bad statistic, but it's still just another number.