Goodbye and Good Riddance, SAT

With any luck, the SAT is dead.  Send all sympathy cards and flowers to the College Board.

The UC system made a significant decision this past week, one that will alter the college admissions landscape:  drop the SAT requirement for incoming students through 2024 and abolish it altogether in 2025.

The SAT is just one more example of a college entrance requirement that discriminates against lower income and minority students who are penalized for their inadequate high school education.  Before we can stand and applaud the UC system for seeing the light, we need to trace some history and look at the present situation.

Right now, colleges are in panic mode.  Every institution is facing a drop in enrollment as the fall semester approaches.  Many students are taking a gap year until Covid-19 goes away or a vaccine is ready for mass inoculation.  Students who are attending this fall, albeit online, want a reduction in tuition and fees because they will not need on-campus facilities and programs since they will be learning from a distance.  There is also the stubborn belief that online classes are not up to the quality of in-person learning.  Campuses that will open for in-person learning must accommodate social distancing and other factors to combat a new surge in cases should a second wave of Covid-19 emerge.

So the UC decision is a financial one:  open the doors to everyone in the hope of scoring enough students to fill roll sheets.

The College Board, owners of the SAT, has been down this road before.  In the 1990s, when the UC system threatened to drop the exam, officials at the College Board revised the test to include writing just to appease the UC.  Changes to the exam year-to-year are often in response to threats to drop the exam.  In addition to administering the SAT, the College Board is a powerful lobby whose mission is to keep their college clients happy.  The SAT is something of a scam; students pay exorbitant fees to prepare for and take the test.

Here is a fact to consider:  in a 2014 article in Business Insider, College Board revenues amounted to $750 million dollars, and more importantly, the College Board enjoys non-profit status.  They pay top executives millions of dollars, comparable to many CEOs at for profit companies.

In addition to administering SAT tests and other standardized exams, the College Board as created a test prep empire.  Online tutoring services offer SAT prep as well as other preparation courses at hefty fees that are beyond the reach of many middle and lower middle class families.  Private high schools offer test preparation as an elective or supplemental class, often at an additional cost above and beyond regular tuition.

Go to any bookstore and there will be rows of test preparation books.  These are designed for students to prepare on their own for upcoming exams.  Most students can afford the test prep books, but why should they need such publications if their high schools offer a balanced curriculum that prepares them for the college academic experience?  The curriculum in high schools, and even in elementary level education, should match the knowledge and skills needed to learn at the college level.

For the SAT, admissions professionals say that scores are just one more way to determine a student’s readiness for college work.  That’s all good, but the primary evidence for a student’s potential success at the college level is the strength of their high school curriculum and the grades earned.  The fact of the matter is that students are often unprepared for the rigors of college.  They struggle to write, to think critically, to understand difficult readings, and are at loss to comprehend vocabulary and are reluctant to use a dictionary in a book or online.  They have little cultural literacy or an understanding of history and current events.  Many will say outright that their high schools did not prepare them for college.

There is also the matter for grade inflation at all levels.  We have slipped into what used to be known as the graduate school grading scale:  an A is an A; a B is a C; a C is an F.  The letter grading system was designed so that A equaled superior work; a B was good work; a C was average, and therefore, most students in the class received a C; a D was less than adequate; and an F was failure.  Principals and administrators now pressure faculty to inflate grades, as do parents who demand nothing less than a B for their children.  No child should be left behind, no child should fail, no child should face adversity or struggle to achieve.  How is this building strong minds and a competitive edge for the future?

We must raise the bar for high school education in this country.  This requires that college preparation be institutionalized across the curriculum with honest, clear grading and strong curriculum standards that students meet or exceed.  The SAT is a flawed, discriminatory enterprise, and it is not necessary if we raise the bar for students and demand nothing less than excellence.