TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111290/1112120.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.6 KB | 151 lines

                                                                                EDUCATION, Page 93

The Test That Everyone Fears


A major revision shakes up the all-important SATS


    Seldom has a warning been so baldly ignored. Back in 1926
the nonprofit College Board introduced the Scholastic Aptitude
Test with a cautionary observation: "This additional test," said
the board, "should be regarded merely as a supplementary record.
To place too great an emphasis on test scores is as dangerous
as the failure properly to evaluate a score."

    So much for caution. In test-happy America, the SAT has
since become a kind of academic icon and a national rite of
passage for college-bound high school students. Every year more
than 1.3 million of them take the 2-hr., 30-min. multiple-choice
exam, which is intended to measure students' reasoning skills,
math and verbal, as well as their readiness for college. High
SAT scores -- perfection is 800 on each half of the exam -- have
acquired the cachet of quality. Suburbs lure prospective home
buyers by touting the SAT records of their high schools'
graduates. Colleges boast of the high average scores of their
incoming freshmen; nearly 1,600 U.S. colleges and universities,
including the Ivy League elite, rely on SAT results.

    Nonetheless, complaints abound. Critics of standardized
testing have long charged that the SATs contain built-in
cultural and class biases, which put women and minorities at a
disadvantage. They claim that the multiple-choice questions do
not effectively gauge students' critical thinking skills or
their future potential.

    Partly to deflect the growing unhappiness, trustees of the
College Board last week revised the SAT, although less radically
than some critics had wanted. Starting in 1994, the SAT and its
companion Achievement Test will be known as SAT-I and SAT-II.The
former will test verbal skills and reasoning ability in math;
the latter, knowledge of certain specific subjects, such as
history and politics. SAT-I will include longer critical reading
passages and more questions to test students' understanding of
the material.

    In the math portion, test takers will have to work out the
answers to several problems rather than merely make a
multiple-choice selection. They will, however, be allowed to use
hand-held calculators. The optional SAT-II will include a
20-min. essay as well as a world-history test.

    Harvard University President Derek Bok was chairman of a
commission that recommended the changes. The revision, he says,
"begins to send a useful signal to schools that problem-solving
ability is important, rather than simply the ability to identify
the correct answer from a predetermined list." But Bob Schaeffer
of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, a longtime
critic of the SAT, charged that the board had failed to deal
with the verbal section's analogy problems, which frequently
make unconsciously elitist, racist or sexist assumptions about
the backgrounds of those taking the test. On one recent test,
nearly 16% more men than women were able to select the right
analogy to "mercenary: soldier" (hack: writer).

    Many educators argue that high SAT scores are no more
accurate a predictor of academic success than high school class
ranking or grade averages. They also charge that SAT success can
be learned, pointing to cram schools that promise, for
substantial fees, to raise students' scores by 100 points or
more. After a two-year study, Dr. Stuart Katz, a University of
Georgia psychologist, concluded last March that the verbal
section of the SAT measures test-savvy, not reading ability. He
found that 172 college students correctly answered, on average,
38% of the multiple-choice comprehension questions without even
reading the test selections. Many colleges, notably in the
Midwest, are turning to the rival ACT exam, put out by the
American College Testing Program. That 3-hr. battery of exams
claims to measure student skills in four curriculum areas:
English, reading, science reasoning and math.

    The SAT revisions have again focused attention on what one
critic, author David Owen, has called "probably the most
powerful unregulated monopoly in America": the Educational
Testing Service of Lawrence Township, N.J., which prepares the
exams for the College Board to administer. And not just the
SATs. A nonprofit corporation, ETS is by far the nation's
largest private educational assessment service, offering a
variety of tests that range from electrology to law to the
federally sponsored National Assessment of Educational
Progress, which measures student achievement in seven subjects.
Founded in 1947, ETS has a serene, campus-like headquarters near
Princeton University, a staff of 2,960, more than 270 clients
(including the Federal Government), gross revenues of $299.7
million -- and seemingly boundless ambitions.

    "Our traditional mission has been to place ourselves at the
transitional points of education between high school and
college, college and graduate school," says ETS president
Gregory Anrig, 58, a former teacher and commissioner of
education for Massachusetts. "Now we are expanding into more and
more programs that help kids to learn and teachers to teach more
effectively."

    In fact, ETS is moving as aggressively as a for-profit
corporation would in seeking to expand its business. Among other
things, the service is using computers and interactive video in
new grammar-school courses that are designed to advance
critical-thinking skills. In a program currently under
development in Brookline, Mass., students play reporters who
"investigate" a story from classical mythology under the
direction of a computerized editor and their homeroom teacher.
Then the youngsters write a story on what they have discovered.
ETS is also working with computers to redesign the National
Teachers Exam, used in 34 states to license prospective
educators. The company's proposed test for fifth-grade math
teachers would measure not only the exam takers' knowledge of
the subject but their understanding of how fifth-graders learn.

    ETS officials deny that the SATs propagate inequity and
reflect bias. The fact that upper-income whites score higher
than lower-income minorities, they contend, reflects society's
imbalances, not the exams'. ETS notes that 400 people of varying
backgrounds check every SAT question during 10 review stages and
eliminate any that are found to be biased. "To say these tests
are biased because results vary," says Gary Saretzky, chief of
ETS's sensitivity-review process, "is like blaming the
thermometer for the fever."

    Perhaps the strongest criticism of ETS is that its zealous
promotion of standardized testing emphasizes minutiae at the
expense of mind stretching. "In some inner-city schools, kids
don't read whole books," says Arthur Weiss, president of the
National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. "They
spend all their time learning how to read three paragraphs and
answer multiple-choice questions." Anrig concurs. "You don't
need to test a child every three months to see whether he can
read," he says. "It's like pulling up a carrot to see if it's
growing."

    His concern is a major reason why ETS is devoting more of
its energies to curriculum development. On tests there may be
instant answers, but not in the learning process. It may take
years before educators can decide whether Anrig and his
colleagues have created new solutions or compounded old problems
for America's troubled schools.


By John Elson. Reported by Joelle Attinger/New York, with other
bureaus.