SAT Scores Fall As More Students Take the Test (wsj.com) 201
According to the College Board, average scores dropped on the SAT this past test-taking cycle, with a greater percentage of high-school students not ready for college-level work. The Wall Street Journal reports: A record 2.2 million 2019 graduates took the college entrance exam, up from 2018's record of 2.1 million. The increase is partly attributed to more districts offering students the option to take the test during the school day, often at no cost. The College Board said the lower scores were partly due to the rise in students taking the exam during the school day. These students are more likely to be minority, attend high-poverty public schools and have parents without college degrees. The groups are typically underrepresented on college campuses and might never have taken the test before, said the College Board.
Since the SAT is now measuring the college readiness of students who previously wouldn't have taken the test, it is understandable that overall performance has fallen slightly, she said. College Board officials said the increase in students taking the exam is a good indication that more are considering college as part of their future. The percentage taking it during the school day grew to 43% from 36%. Overall, the combined mean SAT score is down to 1059, from 1068, out of a possible 1600 point scale for the two sections on the exam -- math and reading, writing and language. The percentage of students meeting benchmarks to indicate readiness for introductory college-level coursework slipped to 45% from 47%. Those not meeting any of the benchmarks increased to 30% from 27%.
Since the SAT is now measuring the college readiness of students who previously wouldn't have taken the test, it is understandable that overall performance has fallen slightly, she said. College Board officials said the increase in students taking the exam is a good indication that more are considering college as part of their future. The percentage taking it during the school day grew to 43% from 36%. Overall, the combined mean SAT score is down to 1059, from 1068, out of a possible 1600 point scale for the two sections on the exam -- math and reading, writing and language. The percentage of students meeting benchmarks to indicate readiness for introductory college-level coursework slipped to 45% from 47%. Those not meeting any of the benchmarks increased to 30% from 27%.
U no (Score:5, Funny)
ho ist tis neuws?
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"ho ist tis neuws?"
What? That half the population has an IQ of under 100 is not news?
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There used to be overlap between IQ and the SAT [psychologytoday.com], but it has apparently disappeared. Mensa stopped accepting SAT scores after the early 90s, and another society stopped after the mid 2000s.
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There used to be overlap between IQ and the SAT [psychologytoday.com], but it has apparently disappeared. Mensa stopped accepting SAT scores after the early 90s, and another society stopped after the mid 2000s.
Mensa needed more members.
In the Vietnam era, the military would accept anyone who could fog a mirror.
As the war wound down, they only accepted high school graduates.
Need is the driver in both cases.
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"ho ist tis neuws?"
What? That half the population has an IQ of under 100 is not news?
You're trolling. Citation needed.
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Because everyone is equal and everyone has the right to get his college degree! Who made this study, the patriarchy?
(is that still the bad guys or did we invent a new boogieman already?)
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I feel like this is more about identifying a few diamonds in the rough rather than creating equality. I know from a HS in my neighborhood in TX that there is a very defeatest attitude amongst students, and even a few who actually have the brains but not the money will decline to take the test just because it will lead to bitter disappointment.
I think it is expected that most people who are now taking this test who ordinarily would have chosen not to, aren't performing all that well.
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(is that still the bad guys or did we invent a new boogieman already?)
I think we're still at war with Eastasia.
Re:U no (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the increase in the numbers of students not ready for college-level work is directly proportionate to the rise of for-profit schools.
More like the increasing number of not-for-profit students.
Re:U no (Score:4)
I'd go with the correlation of number of students directly raised through the school system with Common Core.
Dumb down the scoring, and of course people are going to think better of themselves... until they are truly tested.
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And, I'm sure there is someone somewhere going, "Hey, this isn't fair for these new students taking the tests and doing poorly, they are having their self confidence eroded, and the system is tilted against them."
"Hey, let's lower the SAT standards and the college entrance standards a bit more, eh?"
"That'll fix the problem."
Actually, you're the only one I've seen advocating for that.
To future from past (Score:2)
Am I the only one who finds it confusing the the article seems to write out changed percentages in that order?
I guess I'm just used to time progressing forward when reading.
This article by Yoda written certainly was (Score:2)
Or by Klingons.
Or Germans.
Re: This article by Yoda written certainly was (Score:2)
Tell me about it. I've been trying to improve my German by reading normal light novels. I can have a dinner table conversation, or chat at the bar. But, reading what I would consider a 8th grade level novel has me tearing my hair out.
Written German is torture.
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Heh... reading comprehension test....
Yes, took me two passes.
Re: To future from past (Score:2)
consequences and predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
We want to improve access to higher learning institutions, because public institutions are under-funded, and overcrowded, resulting in large student to teacher ratios, and poor levels of instruction.
We also want to do so, because people served by these systems tend toward being impoverished.
Now-- This is a touchy subject, and what I am about to say can be taken very wrongly; I am not, nor do I ascribe to racist bigotry. It's bullshit. Nothing about skin color applies here. You can take a human of any skin color or national extraction, and subject them to these conditions, and they will fail just as much. That out of the way--
If the idea is that getting these people into college will magically transform their lives, then the idea is naive beyond all reason. The factors in these peoples lives that have held them back from scholastic achievement in public school will still be present in the college system. (EG, fathers that do not contribute to familial welfare, Siblings that are involved in drug culture and or use, family that does not value education achievement, and a cultural stigma against doing things that promote success.)
Only now, they get stuck with a huge assed bill. Yeah, that's totally going to help them. /s
Throw into that, one of the major factors in why public school is shit is the overcrowding of classrooms-- and you want to stuff as many people as possible into college to make up for this lack of quality in the public school system-- inducing the EXACT SAME PROBLEM there. (Stop to consider the real reasons why tuition and fees have been exploding. Now, Consider throwing more fuel onto that fire. Add insult to that injury by telling yourself that the reason is to help people get out of poverty-- By slapping them with crippling student debt.)
If you want to help these people get out of poverty, you have to address the life and circumstance characteristics that predispose them to that poverty; Fatherlessness, drug and gang culture, and cultural aversion to career-success mindsets.
You also have to do something about the overcrowding in the public schools. That way these people will be actually READY for college.
Because you see how the SAT scores have dropped? It's because these kids are NOT ready for college. Throwing them into college, expecting college to succeed where public schools have failed, without addressing any of the causative aspects of that failure, is just fucking stupid.
Re:consequences and predictions (Score:5, Interesting)
In America today, you go to school because that is what your supposed to do. You go to college because that is what your supposed to do. It's not because it is considered a privilege to advance in higher learning each day. Saying that the classes are crowded is not the issue. I believe it's more because there is no more discipline in the home and in school. A student can actually assault a teacher and walk away with a slap on the hand in many cases.
On the flip side, if you dumb down the education system, you can create a society of easily controlled slaves because they have no sense of history, except what the stars tell them on TV/Youtube.
Tuitions (Score:5, Insightful)
By slapping them with crippling student debt.
As European: What the hell is wrong with your education system ?!
Why is it that in your backward insane country, young people either need to metaphorically sell organs on the black market, or have the random chance to be born to parents that happen to have started saving money for education back even before the kids were born? (or even before the kids were even conceived? or even before the parents hooked up together ?)
Yes I know, you have a strong aversion to taxes and have an allergy to the cussword "Social" and considers us all as Evil Euro Communists, but why are you making it financially impossible to get higher education? (or at least impossible to get without becoming an indentured slave to the banks?)
No wonder why then "earning money by selling drugs" and "trying to get into a gang" like everybody else in the neighborhood seem a much more achievable career goal to poor people.
-----
Also, off-topic, but in this precise situation the "curltural aversion against career-success mindset" isn't relatively relevant when speaking about poorer students trying to get into college: they are already trying to pass the test and enter college, even if failing they are already trying to get some opportunities, they are definitely not the "To cool for school" delinquant types.
Re:Tuitions (Score:5, Interesting)
It's actually our love affair with greed and capitalism, playing at odds with when we actually DO try to give people a leg up, resulting in shitty as fuck implementations.
To wit-
Our right wing (which to you guys is so ultra-rightwing, that it's from the twilight zone) absofuckinglutely loves the concept of "Getting what you pay for." If it's worth the money, people will pay it, and this is good. (in their view.)
Our left wing goes "But all these people are unemployable, and this is bad!"
The right wing retorts "They should retrain, and become employable! [nytimes.com] It's not our duty to assure people have jobs, we are not a communist country."
So, they compromised. They created a federally backed student loan system that could not be turned down, but to get it through and past the conservatives, they had to make it non-dischargable, so that it was a safe investment.
Fastforward to today-- Where failing public schools, (Because actually coming out and telling people "Your 'Culture' is killing you, if you want to escape poverty, YOU HAVE TO LET IT GO." is unacceptable, because that's 'racist' and shit. Because glorifying criminality, physical and sexual abuse, and reiterating a toxic message about being unable to achieve because 'the man' holds you down is so fucking worth protecting) has resulted in employers having to resort to "College degree" as the new litmus test to separate the incompetent from the competent (because of credential dilution, because "We gotta help these people up! We gotta increase graduation rates at all costs!" did not give the magic results they expected, BECAUSE THEY DID NOT ADDRESS THE CAUSAL FACTORS), and now everyone and their fucking brother has to go into these institutions to even get a life-sucking job they hate and barely pays the bills.
This causes the tuition to go up, resulting in the need for bigger loans that they then cannot pay, because the jobs they are getting are dead end ones that dont pay well. (because they are the jobs that USED to be "Highschool diploma?" as the barrier to entry.)
It's basically the result of the combined toxic cocktail of "Greed is good! Ratchet the price up to what the market can bear! Rawr Rawr Rawr!" combined with extremely naive good will, resulting in very bad outcomes for fucking everyone.
It is this naive good will that I am pointing at here--- The SAT scores are SHOWING these people, that the kids ARE NOT READY for college. To make up for that lack of readiness, the colleges have to give remedial instruction. That takes educator time and resources, and costs money-- It drives up tuition costs, which are already prohibitively expensive.
Even adopting a more European style of funding the higher education system through taxes would not be sufficient, because these kids would not have good graduation rates, because the underlying conditions ARE NOT ADDRESSED.
Re:Tuitions (Score:5, Informative)
So, they compromised. They created a federally backed student loan system that could not be turned down, but to get it through and past the conservatives, they had to make it non-dischargable, so that it was a safe investment.
As soon as student loan guarantees became a federal benefit that everyone automatically qualified for, tuitions magically doubled and redoubled to medical heights (the phrase used to be "astronomical"). That's why few of today's young will ever be able to pay them off.
Re:Tuitions (Score:5, Insightful)
This really needs to be tackled from the supply side. Stop pouring money into loan guarantees (that means the government repays the loan if the student defaults), scholarships, and grants. Use it instead to build more public universities, and fund them more heavily so they don't have to charge as much tuition. Offer incentives to private colleges to expand and increase number of students, but contingent on lowering tuition. Offer construction and business loans to new and growing colleges so they can create programs competitive with the better existing colleges, and more attractive to students.. The result will be an increase in supply, which causes prices to fall, even though more students will be able to attend college.
Making loans non-dischargable was an attempt to address students losing their price sensitivity when they got a loan since it wasn't their present-day money they were spending (it was their future money they were spending). Same thing happened during the housing bubble, where people just accepted the biggest mortgage they could qualify for, without really considering if they could realistically pay it back. The theory was that if you can't discharge your loans, you're more likely to treat the loan money as present-day money, and will retain your price sensitivity and reject colleges which raised their tuitions to impossible-to-pay-back levels. Unfortunately, most students also seem to have trouble distinguishing between reasonable and impossible-to-pay-back tuition levels, so continued to pay the exorbitant tuitions even knowing they couldn't discharge the loans via bankruptcy. We need to get rid of the loans entirely.
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As soon as student loan guarantees became a federal benefit that everyone automatically qualified for, tuitions magically doubled and redoubled to medical heights (the phrase used to be "astronomical"). That's why few of today's young will ever be able to pay them off.
Tuition did not magically double and redouble because of student loans. This book [amazon.com] does a good job of explaining most of the largest factors, of which some are summarized in this article [theatlantic.com].
Nearly all services which require highly educated employees have seen skyrocketing prices. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, etc have seen prices increase at a similar level as higher education. This is a much bigger factor than fancy dining halls and dormitories (although they are also factors). Economic prosperity is highly driv
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You're forgetting the additional push from helicopter parents refusing to accept that their children aren't 'college material'.
It doesn't matter how you phrase it but the German school system is how we used to do it here. You used to get set on a track in 8th grade based on your ability and drive. Then a bunch of parents got up in arms (at least in my school district): "How dare you say Jimmy shouldn't go to college!" So we started cutting trade classes left and right.
By time I graduated the "trades" were a
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The problem is real unemployment, which is much higher than even the most pessimistic official estimates because it doesn't count people who have given up looking. As a way to screen out some of the hundreds or even thousands of applications that come in for any given job worth having, they mandate a degree even for jobs where it's irrelevant. That increases the value of education, and then they raise prices.
If they receive any government funding, tax breaks, etc. colleges' tuition should be pegged to affor
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I'm not making this up:
My goddam school experience was a fucking depressing bore. I hated every fucking day. I averaged C scores and lived for summer vacation.
Off to the side, I was the neighbourhood kid who fixed radios and TVs (ca. 1957) read physics books, and self-taught myself about shit I loved.
Fast forward to 1965 and I'm in Uncle Sam's Yacht Club boot camp in San Diego, about to graduate.
A counselor asked me what career path I wanted to pursue. I asked what was available to me.
He said of 65 jobs ava
Re:Tuitions (Score:5, Insightful)
why are you making it financially impossible to get higher education?
Because for most middle class jobs, "higher education" is just the real life version of role playing game grinding, in order to keep the labor pool from becoming over-saturated. Make it too cheap/too easy and you'd end up with too many qualified applicants and not enough work to go around.
We already have free education that's easy enough for most people to complete. It's called high school, and the jobs that you can get with a high school diploma almost all universally suck, because almost every adult has achieved at least that level of education. Hell, let's just give everyone free doctorates and when everybody's a doctor, everyone will be rich, because that's totally how labor markets work. /s
Re:Tuitions (Score:4, Interesting)
Odd. Over here, universities are generally free or have some nominal fee that keeps people from being perpetual students. Yet our universities don't "over-saturate" the labor pool.
The trick is to use the thousands that enter to weed out those that don't cut it. We have dropout rates that would probably make the average US student reconsider whether he even wants to try. Our universities can afford it. If you have like ten times the number of students starting that you need, dropping out 90% of the students is no big deal. You'll still end up with enough degree holders that you can keep your system running.
The difference between our systems is mostly that over here, your brain, not your wallet, dictates what degree you have. You just have to learn that yes, you're allowed to tell people that they are TOO DUMB to participate and that they should go somewhere else.
Re: Tuitions (Score:4, Insightful)
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It also has the side effect of forcing employers to take off the dumbfuck glasses they like to wear, by demanding college credentials to change lightbulbs, just because that many graduates are out there, and it makes HR's ass feel good. (no really, How they FEEL about a candidate is a justification for demanding a degree. VERY FREQUENTLY.)
A huge percentage of the "need" to have a degree over here is from HR people thinking 'Degree' means "baseline competency" instead of "higher study", like it is supposed t
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The determinations that the state makes are typically very rigid
My wife is eastern European. She makes no bones about it. The only reason she was able to get into medical school there was because her father was a history professor and was able to pull some strings with friends in the administration. Most of the students were there because of under the table bribes.
For a clear picture of how things work in a "socialist" state, you really need to talk to someone that lived it. You'll find that capitalism NEVER disappears. It just goes underground.
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Perhaps more importantly, in order to send as many people as possible to college, whether or not it makes sense for a given student, we've tried to make it easier to afford up front. One effect of that was breaking market price feedback. Costs have been obscured and too many students are being sent, so demand is skyrocketing. Inflated demand + no pric
Re: Tuitions (Score:2)
The latest number I saw was that 69 out of 70 K-12 teachers in the US identify as socialists or Marxists.
Their insistence on equality of outcome and "no real truth" has demolished the primary school system, so they're blaming capitalism.
These unprepared kids believe that college is their only option for success in life and they can't be turned down for a loan, so they major in something unmarketable that they can handle and wind up with jobs that can't pay their debt and debt that cannot be discharged, so t
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98.5%? That number must pretty much be a complete lie. Not even a cult is this homogeneous.
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Admittedly, I went to school considerably before the current mess...
That said, my parents weren't wealthy by any means. Maybe the bottom edge of upper-middle-class. And yet I managed to go to college without acquiring crippling debt (actually hard
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Depends. The minimum wage that I was earning while in college hasn't even doubled, but the tuition that is required is more than 5x as much (at least at the state school I went to.) Could you have worked your way through college having to work triple the hours you did? If it was hard then, imagine how hard it is now.
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As an American: What the hell is wrong with your education system?
You throw super-high-stakes tests at young teenagers, that are used to skim the highest scorers off to go to universities, while everyone else is stuck in, at best, a vocational track that is designed to produce ignorant peasant technicians.
Then the costs! There average American college education costs about $25,000 to $30,000.
The average western European will pay $60,000 to $80,000 in college-education taxes during their life, roughly two
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What an odd concept, deciding whether a student should get an advanced degree based on his ability instead of his purchasing power...
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Do you think IQ tests are a good measure of intelligence, too?
If you don't, why would you think a single test battery given to teenagers is a good measure of their ability for ALL professional careers?
If you do, can you please share this IQ test that works with the rest of the world? We'd really like to know how you do it.
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That's not true there any number of programs that can help someone go to college and do well so long as they can do well. I went entirely on grants and scholarships.
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By slapping them with crippling student debt.
As European: What the hell is wrong with your education system ?! Why is it that in your backward insane country, young people either need to metaphorically sell organs on the black market, or have the random chance to be born to parents that happen to have started saving money for education back even before the kids were born? (or even before the kids were even conceived? or even before the parents hooked up together ?)
The cost is an issue, but that cost has come about as a function of demand. Coupled with that, there was a concerted effort in years past to devalue trades, and emphasise the mere fact of holding a degree as something superior. So Parents and their larvae were inculcated with the idea that you go to college, pick any major, and your future is assured. Parents and students were willing to pay any cost. The universities were more than happy to take that money.
So what do we end up with? A lot of young people
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The only reason the US needs socialization of Education and Medicine is because we need an arm
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By slapping them with crippling student debt.
As European: What the hell is wrong with your education system ?!
Why is it that in your backward insane country, young people either need to metaphorically sell organs on the black market, or have the random chance to be born to parents that happen to have started saving money for education back even before the kids were born?
To be fair, the average debt out of college is around $30k; that's not necessarily "crippling" depending on your job after college. There are also a lot of affordable ways to get an education, especially through community colleges.
I do agree with the OP in that there are a lot of kids being pushed into college like it's a magic wand, when a lot of them might be better served with vocational training etc. Realistically, the top 30% or so (possibly less) of students are the ones who will get the most out of a
Re: Tuitions (Score:2)
Have you looked at us lately? We are
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Oh look, a European "ally" looking down on us and calling us backward and insane.
How unusual.
Stop being backward and insane then.
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Lol, I've noticed your ilk love to just call everyone Trumpsters or MAGA hat wearers. Because the world is binary, either orange man bad or orange man God Emperor.
Would be pretty easy to fix our higher education system. Top 20% of high school students get free college, next 20% get huge subsidies, everyone else can pay for it or go to trade schools. There is no benefit to society of spending $50k trying to give people who don't need it or aren't cable a college degree.
But like usual, we have morons on the r
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It doesn't have to be all racial/cultural. Some people just have a fucking hard time with school. In ye olden days, they could probably make a decent living breeding horses or whatever it was people did when most of us still had to interact with large smelly animals on a regular basis.
It's absolutely absurd to expect everyone to have the same aptitude for higher learning. I personally couldn't get my head around half the things that pass for college level math, but I have no problem understanding coding.
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"If the idea is that getting these people into college will magically transform their lives, then the idea is naive beyond all reason."
Who on earth argues that it will "magically" transform lives?
Saying "I'm not a racist" undercuts your point (Score:2)
Now-- This is a touchy subject, and what I am about to say can be taken very wrongly; I am not, nor do I ascribe to racist bigotry. It's bullshit. Nothing about skin color applies here.
Ehhh...you should have skipped that sentence. Prefacing a sentence with "I'm not a racist," makes it very hard to examine the rest of your point. However, I did read it and believe you that you're not being racist, but you are mistaken.
Having grown up in an impoverished and high crime area, MOVING AWAY to go to public college did transform my life. For many of my peers, those of us who moved away turned out better than those that stayed and went to community college. Part of the educational experienc
Re:Saying "I'm not a racist" undercuts your point (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem faced though, is that "you're a racist" as the gut-reaction to being told "no, you have to get away from/excommunicate those negative messages and influences if you want to succeed" is the norm.
Take for instance, the pejorative slur "Oreo." Black on the outside, white in the middle-- For people of color who do exactly that. When part of the identity politic is the adoption of the persona of failure, success is not possible. Pointing this out is not racism, it's being accurate. The issue is that it is perceived as racism. Thus the preface. I think racism is stupid-- As such, I think that defining YOURSELF by your skin color, and then adopting a narrative that guarantees failure, is stupid. Many other cultural groups have adopted similar patterns, and have failed to prosper for centuries. (like the European Roma peoples.)
Good on you for getting out of that crap, and focusing on your goals. Very happy for you, truly.
Using the wrong metric is what politicians do (Score:2)
Politicians, for the most part, aren't very bright people. They need simple measures of progress, because they can't handle more than one or two degrees of distance between action A and action B. They also have to look as if they're understanding what people are talking about, and since every 20 minutes someone talks to them about something else they need simple ideas that they can remember.
This is their sort of thought process after a ton of meetings, talking to experts, and not really understanding anythi
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You're looking at the what comes out of the holes, not what stays in the strainer.
That the scores are going down because more kids are taking it is excellent. Because the SAT isn't a ticket to college, it's a barrier. Not taking it means you don't get to apply to a lot of colleges. More people taking it means more people can apply.
Critically, students who you noted have barriers to their education.
If 90% of those students fail the SAT, but prior to this 0% were taking it at all, that's still 10% more kids w
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Reparations in the form of massive payments to African Americans (those who are descendants of slaves in the U.S.) is one way to help combat the inequality in education, wealth, income, freedom (mass incarceration), etc.
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Only now, they get stuck with a huge assed bill.
This isn't really true. We have infrastructure in place to pay for college for poor kids. Pell grants, needs-based scholarships, etc. It's actually the middle-class kids that get screwed by the high cost of college education, not the poor kids.
No, the poor kids have other obstacles that prevent them from doing well in college, and make it much harder for them to succeed. Assuming they do succeed, though, they almost never have any student loan debt when they graduate -- and it really does transform th
Re:consequences and predictions (Score:5, Interesting)
The issue is in failing to understand the WHY of that better life outcome.
The degree is not magic. It is a metric of achievement. Lowering the bar of that achievement, so that more people have it, dilutes its value.
This is exactly what has happened to the high school diploma, and it is why employers demand college degrees for dead-end positions.
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The degree is not magic. It is a metric of achievement. Lowering the bar of that achievement, so that more people have it, dilutes its value.
Arguably the value of a Bachelors degree is already devalued just because today's workplace requires more of workers than it did 40+ years ago. It is a natural progression that most of today's workforce requires a Bachelors degree. Going back 100 years in the US, high school graduation rates were lower than college graduation rates today. At some point jobs which only required primary school started to require secondary school. Now we are finding the same is true for post-secondary schooling.
The Masters deg
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That cycle CANNOT continue though.
The number of years actually in the workforce MUST exceed the number of years in the university leading up to that point-- AND produce substantively more value than costs incurred, or the system will fucking implode.
That says nothing at all about the radically increased risks of birth defects caused by having children later in life, or the consequences of "early" pregnancy in peoples reproductive primes. (When society demands that they be in college, and stay there for anot
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Getting everyone to go through college would mean more competition in the workplace those with the highest scores would do better and those that ranked the lowest would still end up in the same crap jobs only with a big bill for college that they can't afford to pay, unless it's free.
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I am just waiting for the "Graduation rates are too low!" shoe to drop on that, forcing the higher learning institutions to forcibly graduate people-- Like has happened in public schools.
There isn't a problem here. (Score:2)
People should not be discouraged from taking a standardized test, even if it just tells them they need to gitgud. Better they find that out only five or ten years too late than twenty or thirty. Maintaining that some slippage of "standards" in the results is the real problem is putting the cart before the horse. The problem is people failing to learn in their schools, not testing that demonstrates it.
Of course this will inevitably be met by teaching to the test -- a necessary evil really, as that is a "bene
What is the Benchmark? (Score:2)
What score is the benchmark for college readiness? This sentence implies that college readiness is requires a 1600 score, but when I took the test decades ago a 1600 score was quite rare.
The summary is deficient, not college ready.
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They've moved back to a total score of 1600 now; looks like they have combined the reading and writing sections into one.
Not quite sure what the OP's on about; the phase "out of a possible 1600 point scale" sounds pretty clear to me that that is the maximum, not the benchmark for readiness. It would have made sense to include that number, too, which can be found here [collegeboard.org]. Looks like the benchmark is 480 for reading/writing and 530 for math, so a total of 1010.
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High school grades are more highly correlated, but high schools began inflating GPA for bragging rights (more students accepted to Ivy league colleges). So colleges needed SAT scores to normalize for grade inflation (since everyone takes the same SAT test). If a student has high SAT scores and a high GPA, then you know everything is kosher. If a student has high GPA but a low SAT score, then you need to take a closer look to figure out w
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I'm sceptical of this claim, I'm not well enough informed about what's on the test, but I know the reputation and have seen some of the questions. I have trouble believing that a test as described is a good way to determine if someone is ready for college.
The math department at the Univ. where I work spent years trying to come up with a good placement test to see which class students should start in their first semester. They eventually gave up upon realizing that the test which had the highest correlation between test scores and success in that first semester was one the students had already taken: the math part of the ACT.
So, for a more narrow definition of "test score and ready for college" (ie, math only), it's certainly true.
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I'm sceptical of this claim, I'm not well enough informed about what's on the test, but I know the reputation and have seen some of the questions.
I mean this as a serious point, and not an ad hominem attack: Then why are you giving an opinion/insinuating this is a bad test? You just admitted "I'm not well enough informed..." and then weigh in on the subject.
This is one of the problems that we have in our society - people weigh in on things they don't have any idea about, and force others to change (or a
More students are taking the test is key. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is for our economy we are demanding college degrees for almost every job. So kids who are not college material are taking the SAT to get into college not for the love of learning or interest in a topic but to get the paper that will allow them to get a job. So students 20 years ago who would say college wasn’t for them would not take the SAT, so the score will drop.
All these kids getting into college will raise tuition. Because there is just increased demand. The influx of people with college degrees will lower the starting wages of college grads when the enter the workforce.
High school need to stop pushing students to go to college. Businesses should evaluate their base requirements for jobs to be flexible for students without degrees. Because most jobs out there that ask for a degree has nothing to do with college studies. But just like seeing a degree to say this person can have enough work ethic to pass college.
Economy wise, getting the people who are not college bound into the workforce earlier will just improve the general economy. Vs having a 2+ year gap of them not working with years of debt they have to pay.
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There is the issue of Over Qualification.
If you get someone with a Masters Degree to do Labor (unless they really wanted to change their career plan) you are probably not going to get the best employee for that job.
When some one is over qualified the following tends to happens.
1. They question every request: For a lot of jobs, you just need to do what they are told to do. Advanced schooling teaches critical thinking so they want to know more then what to do, but why is it done that way.
2. They may not foll
Life is an IQ test, IQ is hereditary (Score:5, Insightful)
What explains the tendency for the children of the wealthy and college educated to be more likely to enter college is that life is an IQ test and IQ is largely hereditary.
This doesn't mean every child of a college graduate goes to college. History proves that. Also, just because someone's parent didn't graduate college does not mean that this person will be unable to get admitted to college.
The ACT and SAT tests are largely IQ tests. There are people that take classes intended to help people raise their scores but they can only help with things like tactics and time management, which might get them a few more points is all.
IQ is not totally determined by inheritance. There's things that can delay development or lower IQ permanently like injury, toxins, physical and mental abuse, malnutrition, and I'm probably missing some.
Do you want your children to go to college? There's a few things you can do to help. Read age appropriate material to them when they are young. Make sure they eat enough vegetables, brush their teeth, and go to bed on time. Buckle them in when in a car, and have them wear a helmet when on a bike. Make sure they get some play time outside. Don't give them too much sugary foods. Talk to them. Listen to them. Don't abuse them. Do you have the general idea?
Healthy and well adjusted children tend to become intelligent adults. Being poor is no excuse for a child to be unhealthy and undisciplined. Not in the USA anyway. There's plenty of ways for parent to make sure their children get what they need. And getting kids to bed on time costs nothing.
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IQ tests are mostly bunk. The average IQ in the US has gone up by 20-30 points over the last century. This is so well known it's even got a name: The Flynn Effect [wikipedia.org].
This time scale is too short to be accounted for by genetics. It's environmental: better diet, cleaner air, better educational opportunities. Just removing lead from paint and petrol really helped.
Hereditary intelligence is mostly just a more presentable variation of racial intelligence. A classic example of why correlation is not causation.
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Two words.
Food deserts.
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Sorry, but no.
You can actually train to improve in IQ tests. IQ tests measure less your intellectual ability but more whether you're good at doing IQ tests.
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IQ tests are really knowledge tests. Solve this math problem? I haven't gotten that far in math yet. Oh well, then i guess you're stupid. Anyone who's taken one and didn't realize this failed the test. I nail anything that's language related and do great on pure logic but I'm not psychic, so i can't know things i don't know.
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No test is perfect, but to claim that the ability to study and change your score invalidates it as a measure of intelligence doesn't make sense to me. Do you not believe that people can become more intelligent with study? If I improve my memory, improve my language fluency, improve my reading speed, expose myself to new ways of thinking, study a bunch of different problem archetypes... that doesn't actually make me smarter? I think it does, just like you can take a creative writing class and do exercises to
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Disproven:
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
lower the standards (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously we need to continue lowering standards until everyone is a doctor, lawyer, or engineer.
Is this statistically significant? (Score:2)
This is not surprising. (Score:3)
I'm surprised (Score:2)
Not that the scores drop. What surprised me is that it took so long to happen.
As companies increase what they ask for in degrees and diplomas to fill their jobs, people start to move upwards in the diplomas and degrees they try to get. The older ones (ok, the ancient ones, rather) here will remember that a high school diploma was actually something that qualified you for a sensible job. Certainly not anything glamorous but absolutely one that you could make a decent living off. You'd probably not be the hea