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SAT Under Fire
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10969 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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6 / 1986 |
2,646 Words |
| Author
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Herbert London
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NONE OF THE ABOVE: BEHIND THE MYTH
OF SCHOLASTIC APTITUDE
David Owen
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985,
327 pp.
In the first week of May, kids across the country can be observed with a lugubrious look on their faces as they enter school buildings. On this day they all carry number-two lead pencils. For three hours they will be required to answer more than a hundred questions in math and English usage that could have a dramatic effect on their future. In the vernacular of adolescents, this exam is "a white knuckler." It is the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and serves as an important criterion for college admission. This is not a matter to be taken lightly.
Recognizing the significance of this score, middle-class parents either insist that schools provide SAT preparation classes or they send their children to proprietary institutions for such instruction. Although ETS contends that scores cannot be dramatically improved through such instruction, very few people actually believe it. The proof--as one is wont to say--is in the pudding; kids do a lot better on this test after they receive instruction. But leaving this point aside for the moment, why does this one exam (with verbal and math parts) have so great an influence on college decisions? What is the Educational Testing Service, and from what source does it derive its authority?
These questions are answered in a biting, persuasive, hard-edged polemic written by David Owen and entitled None of the Above. Mr. Owen views ETS as demonic and the SAT as a sham. He doesn't simply buttress an argument with evidence; he clobbers the reader over the head. Very often his passion strikes a responsive chord. What he argues is that a test based on vague and arbitrary criteria determines the future for many adolescents. Presumably tests are an objective screening device removed from faulty human impressions. The SAT, however, is to an extraordinary degree an extension of faulty impressions. Most important, the exam itself is a crude barometer of college readiness. Students who receive instruction for the SAT learn to "beat" the test; they don't learn math and verbal skills--that is reportedly incidental to the test results. For Mr. Owen the test is an example of the educational tail wagging the dog.
What happens in four years of high-school education is seemingly less significant than one's performance on a three-hour exam fraught with intrinsic flaws. This is a harsh but largely compelling indictment of the ETS. Of course, Owen approaches his work as a zealot out to slay the educational testing dragon. He doesn't seem to realize that if he flailed about somewhat more cautiously than he has, the reader would be inclined to regard his book as scholarship instead of insouciant criticism. Nonetheless, Owen has accomplished a great deal.
Unmasking ETS
For one thing, he has excoriated the mask of legitimacy behind which ETS has hidden. The questions on this exam are sometimes clumsily written with a variety of right answers. Three additional correct answers could change a mediocre score into an outstanding score. The exam can be "beaten"
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