SAT, Politics, and a Dumb Test

My experience with the SATs started in 1959. Going to a New York Catholic High School, they told us nothing about the PSAT. So I thought it was a joke, and a waste. So much for Catholic education. Then I spent time with my friends at the Jewish Community Center, instead of CYO basketball, and saw that it was not a joke. I took the Bronstein and Wiener course at the old Commodore Hotel, studied the heck out of the prep book and as well, got 1500+. I even found mistakes on the exam and notified the College Board. Needless to say they did not respond.

But what is the point? Back then they said you could not study for the test, that is measured you, and no matter how much your prepped you could not improve your score. Nonsense! If you took it seriously then you could ace it. That was and still is the secret.

But now it has become so overtly political. From the New Hampshire Dept of Education we have:

During the 2019, students taking the SAT test were requested to write an essay featuring a passage from a column by a current presidential candidate, unbeknownst to the New Hampshire Department of Education. The opinion piece – “There’s No Need to End Saturday Mail Delivery” – was authored by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, and published in the Wall Street Journal on March 4, 2014. As part of the essay section of the SAT, students were given a section of a topical column to analyze and are required to read it, explain how the author builds an argument to persuade an audience, and support their explanation with evidence from the section. Students are not asked to agree or disagree with the position taken in the section or asked to write about their personal experience. In New Hampshire, about 13,000 students took the SAT. The written test was given on March 27, and the digital test was administered through April 9. The NH DOE found out about the column section from a concerned parent on April 10....“The column in question was probably a poor choice, in hindsight,” said ...the commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Education. “However, it doesn’t affect the ability of students to be able to read and process the concept of the piece and whether or not the author made a persuadable argument – which is the purpose of the essay in the first place.” 

 Essays always have strong political bents. Personally you never know who grades them and what basis they use to grade them. Put and loaded political question and what does one expect? If you are critical the chance you have an even handed grader is less than zero.

In my experience and in my opinion the College Board slowly deteriorated into a sinecure for politically well connected resulting in the need to feed back what one is expected to do. I am reminded of one of my doctoral students whose success was predicated on his achieving the highest grade in Communist Theory in college. Not that he was a believer but that by asserting the right responses he achieved what he sought, a PhD at MIT.

Is this entity becoming the equivalent filter for this country? If so there will be two results. First, humans are adaptive and smart, they will give back what is expected. Yet, second, it will turn them into the opposite of what the political propagandists want. Perhaps this may be beneficial after all.

These well paid folks at the College Board should have some balanced integrity. Stay away fro politics! You are not the propagandists for whomever.