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It Doesn’t Test for Success
By Joanne V. Creighton, in the Los Angeles Times (March 13, 2006)
In an editorial printed in the Los Angeles Times, Joanne V. Creighton, the president of Mount Holyoke College, calls into question current uses of the SAT in college admissions. The recent news that more than 4,000 students’ SAT scores were misreported this year, Creighton says, “should prompt all colleges, universities, students and their families to ask serious questions about a college placement system that, through a single computational error, can irrevocably alter a student’s educational trajectory.” Even when scores are correctly reported, high-stakes standardized tests like the SAT are deeply problematic, she says: “The test falls far short of predicting academic or career potential or a host of important aptitudes, such as curiosity, motivation, persistence, leadership, creativity, civic engagement and social conscience.”
The reasons underlying the SAT’s failure to test for success are multiple, according to Creighton. Because higher education today is much more diverse—in terms of both students and institutions—than it was in the 1920s when the SAT was developed, a single “one-size-fits-all test” cannot be expected to adequately measure academic potential. At Mount Holyoke, where the SAT has for several years been optional, a study has shown that there is “no meaningful difference in academic performance” between students who did and did not submit test scores. The study has also confirmed the SAT’s economic bias: students from higher income families are more likely to have the advantage of special SAT preparation or tutoring.
Such problems of fairness and accuracy “are a blow to the test’s credibility,” Creighton argues. Moreover, she says, the experience of Mount Holyoke demonstrates that “we don’t need the SAT in order to predict academic performance in college.”
The full text of President Creighton’s editorial is available from the Los Angeles Times.
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