How Bill Gates Destroyed the SAT by Daniel Greenfield

How Bill Gates Destroyed the SAT by Daniel Greenfield

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2019/06/how-bill-gates-destroyed-sat.html

Standardized testing is the engine of meritocracy. When the College Board standardized testing through the SAT, it introduced merit to an educational system where status was determined by family history. A poor immigrant who studied hard and worked hard might have a shot at the best schools in the land. Over a century later, the College Board has announced that the Scholastic Assessment Test will include an adversity score based on zip codes that purports to measure the social environment of the student. (I really have to wonder about this whole idea of trying to somehow insert "social justice" into college admissions. Past experience has shown that admitting kids who aren't really well prepared for education programs leads to either major drop out rates, or somehow special grading that cheapens the whole educational process and tends to really tick off everyone who's not part of it. The military service academies had that problem and their solution has been to set up marginal candidates with a full year of preparation courses and training, to get them more on a plane with the others before they start the regular 4 year program. (Some consider this unfair, and more taxpayer money spent on a kind of affirmative action.) But just finding a way to inflate some kid's SAT score so that his actual 650 becomes a 725 and a mainstream kid with an actual 720 loses out from being admitted does not seem just at all, nor in the long term really productive for society. But maybe that's just me? --Del)