This is what puzzles me. What is the intent of the SAT, is it to assess aptitude for something? Is that something the desire to achieve good grades? Is it intelligence? Is it the aptitude to fire guns in a tank? For sure if you have a test that tests something, then you assign outcomes based on that assessment, then anyone has the opportunity to understand what is being assessed and practice until they are good, but what does that tell you?
I don't doubt there's a correlation between some aptitude that measures propensity for success and SAT score, but I'm still struggling to see how that benefits the poor or the migrants in general? In truth, it benefits a narrow section that "fit the mould" that is expected by success on a SAT; that is, members of the notional outgroup that do the SAT in the expected way can benefit, those that don't still fall by the wayside.
There are very many intelligent people that for whatever reason - cultural, bad parenting, poor education - still fall to achieve this mark of success. Is that acceptable? I think there's at least scope for saying that maybe a SAT is not the optimal strategy for finding all those that would benefit most from higher education. I've no idea what is, but there seems to be some very strong opinions here that don't seem particularly intent on seeing the bigger picture.
It's supposed to test a combination of intelligence and work ethic, and it does an OK job at that compared to everything else while being the hardest thing for established and/or wealthy students to game.
> I'm still struggling to see how that benefits the poor or the migrants in general
Maybe there can be a better way, but today the options are SAT or no SAT. How can a smart, poor student who goes to a bad high school (e.g. my dad fleeing Iran) stand out other than the SAT?
the point of standardized tests, is from what I understand, getting some sort of "objective" ranking, not for the purpose of intelligence per se, but to have a number so that when there is a cutoff, no one complains because everyone had (ceteris paribas) had an equal chance of getting in that cut-off, if they had worked hard enough.
In countries like India, the test like JEE are really absurd, because the competition is just that tough. Just any sort of question that fits in the syllabus is thrown in, because what else can you do?
In countries like the US, where things are a bit less stressed, they can try to attempt to perhaps gain some secondary data, by testing reasoning or what not.
but in the end, it's just a way to rank "fairly" to create cut-off, to look too deeply into it is not worth it, that's the job for your regular school education.
> but in the end, it's just a way to rank "fairly" to create cut-off, to look too deeply into it is not worth it, that's the job for your regular school education.
Except, presumably, when there are debates about how the tests benefit or not one particular cohort?
Tests seem to be the cheapest, timely (OCR-marked tests can be marked quickly) and most equitable (in comparative terms, not absolute terms) way to gauge people when you have a lot of them.
Any other methods increases cost and time, and introduces subjectivity, which creates issues of its own.
I don't doubt there's a correlation between some aptitude that measures propensity for success and SAT score, but I'm still struggling to see how that benefits the poor or the migrants in general? In truth, it benefits a narrow section that "fit the mould" that is expected by success on a SAT; that is, members of the notional outgroup that do the SAT in the expected way can benefit, those that don't still fall by the wayside.
There are very many intelligent people that for whatever reason - cultural, bad parenting, poor education - still fall to achieve this mark of success. Is that acceptable? I think there's at least scope for saying that maybe a SAT is not the optimal strategy for finding all those that would benefit most from higher education. I've no idea what is, but there seems to be some very strong opinions here that don't seem particularly intent on seeing the bigger picture.