SAT exam to give students "adversity score"

[lfromnj]

Utterly defeats the point of a standardized test.  As others have mentioned, colleges can adjust for circumstances on their own.

I also find the anti-standardized test take curious.  Plenty of countries from the UK to China/South Korea have a far greater emphasis on standardized tests than we do here.  There needs to be some way to compare ability/aptitude levels for college admissions in a way that takes into account the variance in difficulty across schools, and I don't see how you can do that without a standardized test.

TBF the SAT is stupidly easy compared to other countries national exam.

[lfromnj]

To those completely against standardized testing how would colleges tell the difference between a very good high school with harsh grading and a sh**t one?

[lfromnj]

To those completely against standardized testing how would colleges tell the difference between a very good high school with harsh grading and a sh**t one?

Well to be completely fair some more selective schools actually do keep track of how difficult coursework is from school to school. But your point is generally valid - grade inflation messes up the idea of using GPA like this. Also, some people can't get high weighted GPAs simply because their schools don't over many or any IB/AP classes.

You can have difficult coursework by name aka AP's in sh**t schools too. Doesn't mean they were actually difficult. Colleges know some schools have more difficult coursework by also looking at school ranking which is heavily affected by standardized test scores.

[lfromnj]

Just wondering about the SHSAT in NYC. If you people had complete control over the SHSAT system in NYC how would you change it?

[lfromnj]

I was referring to the university entrance exams (which do indeed vary by department) just to say that even in Finland you do have to take standardized tests to get into college, which is what we are talking about with SAT's/ACT's.  I would be OK with people taking different subject tests based on the majors they want, so long as everyone is given the same exam regardless of what high school they went to.  That being said, given how important basic math and verbal skills are to a wide variety of disciplines, it seems reasonable to have a test measuring basic aptitude in both.  

On a broader scale, it seems the US is on the less standardized end of things.  Generally speaking, schools don't spend much  (if any) class time preparing students for the ACT/SAT explicitly, if at all.  Furthermore, most high school math is at a level above what is tested on the SAT.

Contrast this to the UK, where they have the A level exams, are a series of standardized tests given throughout the year for a given subject. And in countries like China/South Korea there is a much more severe, comprehensive college entrance exam that the education system is far more based around than the US's is on the SAT's/ACT's.  

This is where I strongly disagree.  Based on my own educational experience and what has been reported, schools do spend enormous amounts of time preparing students for the SAT/ACT.  The difference is between teaching the knowledge and skills that the test represents and teaching with the items that actually are on the test.

Classroom tests, for example, bear little difference to what appears on the standardized tests.  Instead of teaching to a curriculum (i.e. specific content knowledge or a specific set of cognitive skills), and using tests to sample those bodies of knowledge or skills, we pressure teachers to ensure that students merely do well on the tests.

In the US, wealthy parents give hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to private instructors who guarantee a perfect or near-perfect score on any standardized test to any student who follows their methods.  They are literally teaching kids how to be good test-takers, not good learners.

If done effectively, curriculum-based teaching and testing will measure students' strengths and weaknesses and help teachers make instructional decisions about which students need help in what areas.  If, however, teachers get a copy of a district test, photocopy its contents, and drills next year's students with how to simply get the correct answer to the questions, valid test interpretations become impossible.

I confess I have little knowledge of the way China and South Korea test their students.  But if their teaching methods are anything like the US', then they are merely item-teaching more stringently than we are.  That does not actually determine whether students are acquiring the skills that those tests represent.

I'd be very curious how effective test-taking methods could be at getting someone a perfect score or near one on the SAT unless said person already had a score well above average.  In general, large jumps in one's score on the test are pretty rare. 

But I still don't see how education in the US in general is geared toward standardized testing per se.  In English class you would have to read books and take tests about them which would be the basis of most of your grade along with written essays.  Certainly tests over books aren't just like standardized tests since they are more about conscientiousness, attention to detail, and memory far more than standardized tests where the passage would be given.  Similarly in math in high school, one is taught a principle (e.g. finding a derivative of a natural logarithm, graphing a trigonometric function) and then given different examples of how to do it.  It seems like just a way to learn basic mathematical principles and techniques rather than "gaming" for a test.  I just don't see the claim that high school education is overwhelmingly geared toward the SAT's. 

Furthermore, it sounds like a lot of your concern is the use of general ability tests like SAT's rather than standardized tests in general.  For instance, the AP Calculus and AP Physics C exams unquestionably test one's grasp of the concepts of calculus, and tricks/shortcuts really won't get you very far there.  Would you be OK with tests like those being used as criteria for admission instead?

Well you don't really need Calculus for Physics C and at the most its just derivatives/integrals using power rule(sure you might have 1/50 questions where you might need differential equations but you can get away without knowing it. I will admit it does test one's math critical thinking ability quite well though.

[lfromnj]

It's a terrible idea that should be scrapped.

Thanks for summing up my feelings about the SAT.

I could write a multi-paragraph post about how the SAT was never even created to be a fair assessment, takes away from instructional time and forces teachers to forego more creative activities to prepare students instead, puts an unhealthy amount of stress on students, and exists in part so that companies like Pearson can profit enormously. Instead, I'll just say that a multiple choice test that only covers a few themes within two subjects and punishes students for making educated guesses is a ridiculous form of assessment, and the fact is that students from wealthy families/areas have more resources at their disposal.

As for this idea, I think other posters put it pretty well when they described it as putting a band-aid on a broken limb. Rather than addressing the reasons why low-income students and many students of color come to the SAT at a disadvantage, it's essentially trying to compensate for this, which does not help any of these students in their educational journey in general. We need systematic changes to our education system and our district administrations to better serve lower income communities, not a measure that merely recognizes that a problem exists and tries to "adjust" for said problem.

The SAT doesn't punish guessing anymore. 
I found my cheap prep class <$250  to be relatively sh**t as I just memed around with friends and I just Khan Academied everything at home. Most resources are easily available for free. Sure did I get a slight advantage with the Prep class? Maybe but it really wasn't more than doing a few extra forced practice problems. I could have done it all at home. I didn't really have much stress with my SAT and found more stress doing regular school work. I do agree in general the US should rather focus on a standardized test that focuses more on major rather than 2 subjects.

[lfromnj]

Supposedly "standardized" tests are never going to be standardized when there is a massive volume of resources (requiring money, time, and in most cases some form of long-distance transit) that are effectively only available to the upper-middle class. Of course some students are at a disadvantage when they take it. The SAT is the worst offender for a number of reasons but the amount of time it takes to prepare* for the LSAT, MCAT, GRE, etc. are similar.

Of course there needs to be some corrective to address this. I really doubt that this score will be implemented correctly and it's rather ham-handed but I applaud the effort.

To those completely against standardized testing how would colleges tell the difference between a very good high school with harsh grading and a sh**t one?

This is probably solvable if schools submit information about average grade, enrollment, extracurriculars and advanced classes offered, nearby property values, teacher turnover, etc. If the concern is that grades are uneven from school to school there are ways to create profiles for schools to tell whcih are more likely to be "very good" or "sh**t".

At least there's still the ACT. (I was under the impression that it was customary for graduating students to take both, because you never know on which one you might score better.)

I graduated from high school in the early 2010s and only took the SAT.

The end problem is that 90% of problems and successful schools don't depend on teaching or anything like funding. The most successful school in NYC has less funding than the average NYC Public HS. The main factor is the caliber and the type of students along with the home culture.