Denise Clark Pope critical of SAT revision plan

April 13, 2002

The College Admissions Derby
New York Times

By DENISE CLARK POPE

STANFORD, Calif. -- Officials at the College Board are planning to change the SAT -- again. They might add some tougher math questions, drop the section on analogies, even include an essay; they are scheduled to consider the changes in June. One month later, the Board of Regents of the University of California is scheduled to vote on a plan to drop the test altogether in favor of an exam more closely related to what students learn in high school.

But I'm not sure you can design a test that fairly assesses what students learn in high school. College-bound students will tell you that they don't go to school to learn math, vocabulary or any other subject; for them the main purpose of high school is to get into college, and this is the time of year when they find out whether their high school careers have been worthwhile.

Some learn to do whatever it takes to reach this goal, even if it means scheming and cheating. They feel compelled to copy answers, cut corners and kiss up to teachers to achieve the high grades and test scores they need for college. They are not proud of these tactics. Many would actually prefer to get good grades honestly. But they have too much work in their honors-level courses and too many extracurricular activities. They know they must compete with the two million or so students who take the SAT each year and therefore feel the need to compromise their values, sacrifice their sleep and give up the conventional notion of a high-school social life.

Just as high-achieving students learn to "do school," they learn to "do tests" like the SAT. As early as the fifth or sixth grade, students take practice SAT`s. Test-prep courses teach students routine tricks to maximize their scores: eliminate unlikely answers, respond to the most common vocabulary and math questions first, leave the longer questions for later. The SAT experience, not unlike the college admissions process, has become a time-consuming distraction.

So what can be done? Revising the SAT is not likely to have much of an effect. Nearly 300 colleges have eliminated the requirement for applicants to take the SAT or other standardized tests. They know that the use of such tests is limited.

Many of these colleges rely more heavily on teacher recommendations, student interviews, essays and transcripts. Their admissions officers travel the country visiting high schools, assessing the quality of their curriculums and comparing their grading standards. A few universities allow students to submit portfolios of their work and narrative assessments from teachers in lieu of grades.

This approach to admissions, of course, takes more time. But by devaluing test scores and by emphasizing more qualitative review methods, colleges may be able to assess more effectively the traits that help students succeed in college, especially traits that are difficult to measure on standardized tests: problem-solving skills, creativity and motivation.

For some large universities, this kind of personal attention may seem impossible. Perhaps colleges and high schools can work together to devise ways to minimize the increased workload. And the College Board itself is a potential source of expertise and resources to help improve the process. It might take on the difficult task of developing strategies to review student portfolios and creating other qualitative assessments.

We shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that revising the SAT will transform the high school experience in any meaningful way. Instead of discussing ways to revise the SAT, the College Board and universities should be asking how to reform the entire college admissions process.

Denise Clark Pope is a lecturer in the school of education at Stanford and author of 'Doing School': How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students."