An Imperfect Measure

Over the past weeks, two new controversies have arisen in the old debate over the SAT’s place in the college admissions process. Executives at several major corporations have urged college presidents to de-emphasize the SAT. A court settlement concerning provisions for students with disabilities also threatens to further reduce the accuracy of an measure that is already skewed. Given these challenges, schools should act now to reduce their reliance on a test that allows wealth to obscure aptitude.

The executives who signed a letter to universities objecting to the test cited the differences between bubble-in tests and workplace tasks. They also noted that that a high score on the SAT is not the best predictor of future success. Because of the SAT’s long history and its relatively simple format, it is not a difficult test for which to prepare. Students who familiarize themselves with the format of the test and likely vocabulary words have a definite advantage over students who do not. Capitalizing on this fact, companies like The Princeton Review and Kaplan offer elaborate, expensive test-prep classes to thousands of high school students. For several hundred dollars and a few weeks of time, these companies often guarantee to raise SAT scores by hundreds of points—and they usually succeed. Unfortunately, opportunities for artificially inflating scores are only available to those with enough time and money to take advantage of them. While some companies have made efforts to extend discounted programs into poor areas, these initiatives are no alternative for a full 6-week SAT prep course.

SAT scores have been further distorted by misuse of the test’s provisions for students with disabilities. Until now, such students have been offered untimed tests, but their scores have been flagged to note the change. However, students with disabilities have challenged the flagging of other tests administered by the Educational Testing Service as discriminatory, and under the terms of a court settlement, such scores will no longer be flagged. It seems only a matter of time before the SAT meets a similar fate.

Yet the flags have provided colleges with important information about the conditions under which the test was taken, information that should be no more prejudicial than the test-taker’s race or gender. And although many students who have legitimate disabilities receive untimed tests, the provisions are badly abused by those who simply want a better score and can find a doctor to declare them learning-disabled. It is impossible to know how many of these classifications are fraudulent, but the practice is perceived as common at many of America’s top high schools, mitigated only by the non-disabled students’ fear that colleges will discover their false disability. Unflagging the tests would create an additional incentive for such students to create a disability in an attempt to receive unlimited time—and, through the higher resulting scores, would remove the justified benefit that the exception provides to students who are, in fact, disabled.

We feel that a uniform standard against which all applicants are measured is an essential part of the college admissions process in a nation where high schools differ greatly from district to district. Grade inflation is rampant at some high schools, but nonexistent in others. Small schools cannot offer students the same opportunities to take advanced courses as larger ones can. A test like the SAT is one tool, among others, that helps admissions officers to fairly evaluate students from radically different areas.

But we would strongly prefer a national test of aptitude for which it is not quite so easy to prepare. Because the SAT allows wealthy students to buy their way to the top, it acts as a barrier to social mobility. When some students can afford expensive SAT tutors or lenient doctors but others cannot, disparities in wealth are carried over into the scores, which then become an inaccurate representation of the students’ true abilities.

In the absence of a fairer and more accurate test, which would take years to develop or to become standard, we would like to see colleges de-emphasize the SAT in the application process. We realize that some large institutions, because of the sheer volume of applicants, have little choice but to rely heavily on SAT scores. But universities that have the resources to evaluate each application more closely—such as Harvard, other Ivy League schools and small liberal-arts colleges—should weigh individuals’ grades, recommendations, extracurricular activities and essays far more than their SAT scores. When they do consider SAT scores, these schools should take the socioeconomic context of applicants into account.

Of course, the ultimate goal of secondary education in America should be a system of public schools that would all provide a strong level of education and therefore evaluate students on a roughly comparable scale. In such an environment, the SAT would wither away; until then, its widespread use should not obscure its faults.