Placing Too Much Emphasis on SATs

By Juliana Pearson (October 23, 2001)

Last week, as I perused the pages of the October 11^th edition of the Falls Church News Press, I was not surprised to read the headline "Wants GM SAT Scores Put in Proper Context" over a long-winded letter to the editor. Yes, I thought, here’s another person who has placed an excessive amount of importance on one set of standardized test results. The leading role that SAT scores have played in comparatively ranking high schools, let alone the importance placed on the test during the college admissions process, baffles me because I feel that other educational gauges are more meaningful. The letter to the editor, authored by Falls Church resident Kathy Doran, only helped to increase the SAT’s ranking powers.

Falls Church City school’s have the highest average scores (Math: 570, Verbal: 589) in the region relative to other districts. Doran complained that this was out of context because the scores would rank lower when compared to individual high schools in Fairfax and Montgomery Counties. It seemed clear that Doran did not want to read another press release about George Mason’s "top school" status. If fact, she was so determined to put the members of the George Mason community in their place that she actually took the time to research the SAT scores of surrounding schools and calculate how George Mason would rank among them.

Ironically, she made the school’s SAT scores look pretty good in the process. According to the letter, George Mason’s math average score would rank in the 69^th percentile if the school were in Fairfax County. That doesn’t sound especially high at first, but George Mason would still rank seventh out of the district’s twenty-two high schools. The top ranking school would be Langley. From personal experience, a lot of the questions on the math portion of the test are answered more efficiently with math tricks learned from an SAT preparation program. Perhaps the Langelyites are investing heavily in SAT prep courses. Langley’s average verbal score of 595 also ranks slightly above George Mason’s, but the six-point difference is nominal. This second place verbal finish behind our wealthy neighbor in no way signifies a loss in educational quality.

Why, I wondered, is such a ranking worth fretting about at all? An SAT score is simply a reflection of how well a student is able to answer a random set of multiple choice questions on a particular Saturday morning. Test takers are expected to answer math and verbal question that do not reflect important academic skills and personal qualities. An SAT score does not demonstrate how motivated a student is or how well he interacts with teachers and classmates. It is not an expression of his many passions. All of these are gifts that will get a college bound graduate much farther in life than weekend bubble-filling exercises. Also, the test indicates nothing about the classroom environment or the quality of the teachers. Doran did acknowledge that "we have the advantage of the highest paid teachers and a very small school compared to the 1500-2000 + in other counties’ schools." These are the much more valuable educational assets.

"Why only one National Merit Finalist this year?" Doran questioned at the conclusion of the letter. The implication that there should be more is out of context itself. This year’s senior class is the school’s smallest, with 115 students. If we’re going to fiddle with percentages, having one National Merit Scholarship semi-finalist is certainly praiseworthy. The honored post is difficult to achieve. The semi-finalists’ PSAT scores rank in top five percentiles. What about our ten commended students, who performed extremely, well? Although our semi-finalist is very deserving, a PSAT score doesn’t measure one’s hopes for success in life, or for that matter, in college either.

Despite the importance that some parts of the college admissions industry place on the tests (The College Board is very much a for-profit organization), many enterprising colleges have taken steps to ensure that SAT’s do not reign supreme in the student selection process. These schools have made the SAT score submission an optional part of the application. Two innovative colleges come to mind here, St. John’s and Hampshire. These schools are as academically focused and strenuous. St. John’s is famous for its Great Books Program. Through the reading of original texts, students reflect on the great questions of the Western tradition from ancient Greece to modern times in a seminar format. At Hampshire, students are allowed the academic freedom to design their own curriculum and must complete a challenging series of independent study projects. Both schools value highly intellectual and personal development. Instead of the SAT, both schools place more weight on the transcript and essays. Thus, they have placed more emphasis on the student’s intangible qualities, which produce much more tangible results than any set of numbers.